Born in 1981 in Toronto, Stephen Appleby-Barr lives and works in London, UK. His paintings weave together the fantastical and the everyday, conjuring a dreamlike world which verges on the uncanny. Combining his modern sensibility with a sensitive and masterly use of oil paints that recalls the work of Old Masters, Appleby-Barr creates playful and seemingly timeless visions that evoke the ambiguity of selfhood. The fundamental tenets of his artistic practice are painting, sculpture and drawing – what the artist calls ‘PSD’ – and through which he interprets the world. He is a prolific draughtsman, both from life and imagined, and also creates intricate miniature sculptures and maquettes that he uses in preparation for his paintings, perfecting the scale of his compositions before recreating them on canvas.

Appleby-Barr’s work has been exhibited across Canada, the United States and Europe. His first show with Robilant+Voena took place in Paris in 2021, followed by an exhibition in Milan in 2022, and most recently in London in 2025. In 2023, his works were the focus of a solo exhibition at the Canada House Gallery in London. Simultaneously, the exhibition Correspondence, curated by Daniel Strong at the Grinnell College Museum of Art in Iowa, marked a watershed moment in the artist's career, constituting his inaugural institutional showcase in the United States.

Fool belongs to Appleby-Barr's recent body of work in which he introduced a freer style of painting, allowing for more ambiguity and a more tactile quality of line. The work appears like a portrait or head study of an imagined character from the artist's Mesocosmos - a middle world between fantasy and reality, between past and present - that formed the basis for his recent exhibition with the gallery. This work featured on the cover of the exhibition catalogue, written by Professor Maria Fusco of the University of Dundee. Inspired as much by painters like Rembrandt as by Ovid's Metamorphoses and contemporary literature, Fool reflects Appleby-Barr's unbridled imaginative powers and technical talent.