Mathew Lynn - an overview 2022 (Pacific themes with Day Gallery)
This is a standalone un-linked page not in my website navigation menu - so whilst you can access my live website here as well, you will need to come back to this link if you get lost!
The image gallery pages for each exhibition are very large and may take a while to load, but I’ve done it like this so it is ultimately more convenient. Please let me know if you’re having problems.
note: I’ve updated the Pacific Infinite Gallery Page so it uses links to individual galleries of each work instead.
As my bio says here, I’m primarily known as a realist portrait painter having been a finalist in the Archibald Prize eighteen times, and I’ve worked more or less exclusively on public and private portrait commissions since 1997. In recent years I’ve been making a transition into contemporary painting from around 2019, but it is really a process of coming back to my original love of more expressive figuration from my early days in art school, and the work I did immediately after that which was not always as strictly representational, and how this was combined with my music career at the time, including studying traditional Dagomba drum music in Northern Ghana in my early 20s.
Whilst I continue to paint portrait commissions, which I believe in absolutely as a genre, and as a vehicle and particular calling I have, my long-term goal is now to develop and expand what I started in my early days of art, and to find a unique voice in contemporary art, exploring my relationship with the things that are dear to me in explorations of the figure and place.
In my recent exhibition Pacific Infinite (April 2022, Day Gallery Blackheath) I refer directly to and explore further from key elements in my 2021 Archibald portrait Apprentice – self-portrait with Papa K (aka I do see colour). Here I am transferring the energy, colour and backdrop from that portrait onto themes of the Pacific Ocean and saltwater life, something also very close to my heart. Seascapes and ocean life are another key area of focus and exploration.
My finalist for this year’s Archibald Prize Yaka moto, Magic Pierre is a key breakthrough where I’ve managed to free myself of the strict observational realism that 25 years of portrait painting will imbue on someone! It is a very special work for me, inspired by my sitter who is also my favourite artist in this country, Pierre Mukeba.
Looking ahead, this is the main thing I am trying to achieve - contemporary figuration that is not always representational, and contemporary explorations of place which may have no figurative elements at all. I see a number of interrelated facets that collect these underlying themes and energies together as a whole.
Pacific Infinite - Day Gallery Blackheath, 2022
As mentioned above, Pacific Infinite was a way of exploring the breakthrough in my 2021 Archibald double portrait by simply taking the figure completely out of those places, and transferring this to a focus on Pacific Ocean life. There is most obviously a priority made with intense use of colour and powerful compositional structures in the works. Something also very important to me in these works was the use of a variety of marks and paint thicknesses - some areas are very thick, some very sketchy and transparent. This is about exploring the changing dynamics of surface and finding solutions for a wide range of these dynamics in one work, this is a very important aspect to where I’m heading and approaches when I reintroduce the figure in place.
As mentioned in the notes on the exhibition cover page, colour and forms themselves and their pure resonance are a parallel and distinct intention, apart from the conventional subject matter. This is also an important part of my trajectory where I see possibilities for bodies of work being largely or even possibly purely abstract, and it is a fundamental reason why there was a non-representational breakthrough in my Archibald entry of this year, Yaka moto, Magic Pierre.
To a certain extent there are also obvious Pop Cultural references, references to surf culture and so on, but not really as a celebration or critique of ‘surf kitsch’, rather as a jumping off point to explore colour and the pure forms within what is at times very familiar.
Here is a link to a gallery of images shot in my studio from September 2021 to April 2022.
Final Notes
I anticipate continuing my exploration of the Pacific seascape and place, and not necessarily with strong and extreme colour. There will also be a reintroduction now of figurative works and elements with exploration of my themes and interests in society, most likely in stand-alone collections of work.
My Instagram account (link below) is the best way to see what I’m up day to day.
Mathew Lynn, May 2022