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Paul Winstanley (b. 1954 in Manchester, UK) is best known for his delicate paintings from photographs, which pull beauty from quotidian environs with tactile precision. Wavering between photographic realism and painterly softness, Winstanley’s works call into question the quiet psychology of public and private spaces. The role of the viewer is central to an understanding of Winstanley's paintings and his occasional use of the figure echoes that active passivity. Engrossed, they watch, look, wait, smoke, phone, text. Schooled in the orthodoxies of abstract Modernism, Winstanley spent a decade after studying at Cardiff College of Art from 1973-76 and the Slade from 1976-78 establishing a new visual language, combining the tenets of minimalism with the pictorialism of photography. His breakthrough showing of the large painting 'Walkway' at the Whitechapel Open in 1989 won him the first prize Unilever Award.
Winstanley lives and works in London. His work has been included in exhibitions since the 1970s, and over the past two decades it has been shown throughout the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the United States. Recent institutional group shows include Art and Existence, Esbjerg Kunstmuseum, Esbjerg, Denmark (2013); Lifelike, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California (2013); and Window to the World, Museo Cantonale d’arte and Museo d’arte, Lugano, Italy (2013). His first retrospective was held at the Auckland Art Space in New Zealand in 2008 and was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. Winstanley's work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the collections of The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Tate Gallery, Great Britain; New York City Public Library, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Paul Winstanley
59 Paintings
What does a painter think about when he or she sets out to make a work? Where do their ideas and inspirations come from? How do they begin to translate those thoughts into a painted image? Taking his own works as a starting-point, award-winning artist Paul Winstanley presents a series of texts that together reveal what it means to conceive, make and think about paintings. Among the varied subjects that he considers are how a painter seeks out and finds inspiration in life and the world; the relationship between observed and depicted realities; what constitutes ‘truth’ in a painting; how to approach conceptual and technical challenges; the role of the viewer in the transaction at the heart of painting; and the various belief systems that lie behind the business of creating and looking at paintings. The result, a rare monograph on the work of an artist written by the artist himself, is an exquisite personal account of the art and craft of making painted images today. Published by Art/Books
Hardback, 160 pages
ISBN 978-1-908970-33-6
Paul Winstanley
Art School
Filled with photographs of unpopulated studios, Paul Winstanley's exploration of British art schools highlights their importance at a time when the art school system's existence is more fraught than ever.
Over 200 full colour images, which combine various schools to form their own abstract space, are accompanied by a text by renowned professor Jon Thompson and an interview with the artist and Maria Fusco.
Publisher: Ridinghouse 2013
ISBN: 978 1 905464
Hardcover, 228 pages
"You would not know where to begin to read the image. It looks simple enough. [...] There are so many routes into the image, so many points of recognition within the composition, and yet you do not know where to begin and, for that matter, where to close off or frame your reading. In Paul Winstanley s work the image is defined according to a frame of perception, where the image exists both to represent a scene witnessed, and to convey a position for the viewer within that. This much is given. Where the witness once was so now you stand in a reconstruction of the scene. This much you think you know."
Perfect Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Clouds & Artspace; 1st edition (May 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0958278989
ISBN-13: 978-0958278980
Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.5 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Known for his paintings based on photographs of uninhabited interiors and landscapes, British painter Paul Winstanley has been doing basically the same thing for a long time. Winstanley works with a range of subtle effects taken from photographic technologies. Particularly notable are the digital-like shifts in saturation that play out over a number of the works, where it sometimes feels, when walking from one canvas to the next, as though the brightness has been turned up on the world. Drained of colour, the artificial light from fluorescent lamps travels across the steel and glass construction, drawing our eyes along the empty passage.
Hardcover: 120 pages
Publisher: Maureen Paley Interim Art (December 2, 2000)
ISBN-10: 0953975908
ISBN-13: 978-0953975907