TREVOR SOUTHEY (1940–2015) was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1940. He joined the Church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in South Africa and, in 1967, emigrated to the United States to study at Brigham Young University, where he remained as a professor of art until 1977. Until his death in 2015, Southey was a popular painter and sculptor known for his exacting depictions of the human form.
His family dating back several generations in southern Africa, Trevor Southey (b. 1940) came to the United States from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as a convert to Mormonism in 1965. He received his education in England, South Africa, and the United States where he progressed from student to faculty at Brigham Young University through 1977. Having moved to San Francisco in 1985, he now maintains homes and studios in both the Bay Area and Salt Lake City. He is the devoted father of four children. Southey’s creative direction was set in the innocence of a great distance from the centers of western art. Yet in Mormonism, the dominant culture of his adopted homeland, he found a rich source for expression. His intuitive romantic idealism found focus in themes as varied as eternal family connections, human interaction, and explorations of the plan of salvation. Although his relationship with the LDS church has changed, his work remains spiritual in nature, finding a wider and deeper expression in the broader human experience. While relishing many aspects of the modern art world, which often broaden his visual language, Southey finds his own artistic inspiration in the human body as expressed in works of the past, especially the high F.enaissance. The nude remains the constant core of his work, with spiritual or sometimes psychological musings and sensual undertones, usually inadvertent, evolving in the process.
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