New in the Gallery

Leonard French (b.1928)
Winter Fountain c.1987-93
enamel and gold leaf on hessian on composition board
122 x 137 cm
Signed: l.r. 'French'
Provenance: Private collection Perth
no.11197

Left: Paul Procee, My Nephew 2009, Oil on copper, 25 x 20cm, no.11194

Right: Paul Procee, My Spineless Cousin 2009, Oil on copper, 25 x 20cm, no.11195

Christopher McVinish
The Ongoing Moment
oil on canvas
110 x 110cm
no.11196

Sneak Peek: Space, Time, and Memory by Christopher McVinish

Christopher McVinish's 2009 exhibition, Space, Time and Memory, will be opening tomorrow - Saturday December 5th- from 3 to 5PM.

Click the photograph to view the podcast.

Press Release: Christopher McVinish - Space, Time and Memory

Christopher McVinish (b.1952)
Exhibition: Space, Time and Memory
Opening Saturday 5 December 2009
Drinks with the artist 3 -5pm

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is proud to announce the opening of Christopher McVinish’s new exhibition Space, Time and Memory. McVinish is a realist painter concerned with the depiction of time and the moments of everyday life.

With Space, Time and Memory, McVinish focuses his attention on the figure in the landscape, using the atmospheric qualities of weather to establish a mood and suggest the protagonist’s thoughts. As with The Interrupted Journey No. 3 the darkening clouds and expansive landscape serve to isolate the figures and heighten the stillness of the composition. The collection of paintings range from gritty urbanscapes to soft rolling landscapes all with a centralised pathway – a road, stairway, or sidewalk – as the common thread uniting the receding figures. .

McVinish has an extensive exhibition history and is represented in a number of Australian collections including Griffith University, Redcliffe, Gold Coast, and Toowoomba City Councils.

Space, Time and Memory can be viewed from Friday 4 December until Tuesday 15 December and will have its official opening with the artist attending on Saturday 5 December from 3pm until 5pm.

Artist Statment: Christopher McVinish

Christopher McVinish
Re-imagining the world...

The writer Ian McEwan has said that novelists 'prowl along the borders between the invented and the actual'. The same could be said for the painter Christopher McVinish.

McVinish hunts for fragments of urban life out of which he conjures another reality.
While the genre of Contemporary Realism may sometimes distance the viewer with a cool lucidity, McVinish's work is inclusive, inviting us to speculate about the ambiguous situations he presents, at the same time reminding us of aspects of everyday life taken for granted. In doing so, he showcases the commonplace as special and suffused with potential.

Characteristic of these works is a certain stillness. These are elegant works even while they deal with the grit of our urban environment. McVinish's paintings can imply a vague feeling of disquiet, occasionally even a sense of loss - yet never a loss of hope. McVinish peoples his paintings with survivors, thinkers and observers. The suggestion of a separate reflective interior life appears to be as much the painter's intention as any relationship to 'place'. A fascination with weather assists with establishing the mood of a work, and this too often demands to be read as metaphor for a protagonist's thoughts.

But perhaps the most arresting feature common to these works is that time feels more than simply suspended - it's as if a fleeting abstract moment is continuing, like a musical note sustained.

Ideas and motifs are allowed to hover (sometimes for years) before their moment of coalescence seems 'right'. McVinish's painting methodology involves numerous time-consuming applications of paint and glazes which result not only in a substantial illusion of depth but appear to achieve the remarkable feat of painting what can't be seen, namely air itself: a palpable volume of space is created around things in the picture plane.

Intriguingly oblique, these are visual stories which linger in the mind and show us contemporary life as a kind of half-remembered dream.

Artist Spotlight: Christopher McVinish

Christopher McVinish's exhibition of new work will open on Saturday 5 December from 3-5PM. You can see a preview of this show by clicking here.

Who (or what) do you consider your artistic inspiration?

My artistic inspiration is the world around me. Every time I visit a city, be it New York or Melbourne there is some image that captures my imagination and points me towards a further exploration of my work.

Do you listen to music while you work, and if so, what is most often playing?

I listen to all sorts of music while I work from contemporary Jazz to Ambient to Post Rock. Usually whatever is my latest Amazon Purchase.

Who of your peers do you respect the most?

Of my peers I guess someone like Jeffery Smart but really it would be more International Artists and Photographers like Eric Fischel or Robert Polidori or Gerhard Richter.

Do you have any habits/rituals or strange superstitions when painting?

No rituals or superstitions. Once a painting is drawn up it is full steam ahead.

When did you decide to become an artist?

I started my first oil painting when I was about 12 years old so well before then.

What is your favourite colour?

My favourite colour would to cobalt blue.

Do you have a favourite painting or work of art? If so, what is it?

I don't have one painting that is a favourite but any Vermeer or Rembrandt would be up there and I would kill to own a Joseph Cornell Box.