Paul Winstanley is an artist whose career spans five decades, celebrated for his paintings of ‘semi-public spaces’ that make sense of the experience of seeing. The artist captures environments in which time is suspended, including waiting rooms, lobbies, or art schools emptied during the summer break; thresholds, including veils, windows and corridors; and reflective spaces, like art museums, whitewashed churches and mountainous landscapes. Initially trained as an abstract and minimalist painter in the 1970s, Winstanley reversed the usual trend of 20th-century artists by moving towards a more representational practice. Yet his approach to figuration absorbs the language of minimalism, continuing to explore the elemental qualities of light and space, and their relationship to the object. Bringing this contemporary approach to the ostensibly traditional genres of landscape, interior, still life and figure, Winstanley creates conceptually rigorous work in which the relationship between the viewer and the painting is central. Winstanley looks towards the history of Northern European painting, from the quiet intimacy of Vermeer to the romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich, as well as more conceptual figures like Richard Hamilton, using harmony and pictorial organisation as well as more deconstructionist techniques – abstracting or degrading images from their original source – to render them anew.
Paul Winstanley lives and works in London.
Paul Winstanley
Interior with a Large Window (Yantra), 2021
oil on linen
222 x 148 x 5 cm / 87.4 x 58.3 x 2 in
Paul Winstanley
Lilies 2 (After Filippo Lippi), 2019
oil on gesso on panel
48 x 34 cm / 18.9 x 13.4 in
Paul Winstanley
Looking at Vermeer, 2017
oil and gold leaf on gesso on panel
60 x 55 cm / 23.6 x 21.7 in
Paul Winstanley
New Age 2 (After Saenredam), 2018
oil on gesso on panel
114 x 76 cm / 44.9 x 29.9 in
Paul Winstanley
Trial (After Saenredam), 2017
oil and gold leaf on gesso panel
66 x 78 cm / 26 x 30.7 in
Paul Winstanley
Veil 11, 2002
oil on linen
200 x 185 cm / 78.7 x 72.8 in
Collection of Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
Paul Winstanley has exhibited at Renaissance Gallery, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis; New Orleans Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Blankton Museum of Art, Austin; Colby Museum of Art, Maine; Tate, Hayward Gallery, Barbican Centre, Whitechapel Gallery, Royal Academy, Estorick Collection, and Delphina Gallery, all London; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Tate, Walker Art Gallery, both Liverpool; Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendall; New Art Gallery, Walsall; Southampton City Art Gallery, John Hansard Gallery, both Southampton; Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham City Art Gallery, both Nottingham; Fondation del’Hermitage, Lausanne; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Kunstverein Freiburg; Kunstraum, Potsdam; Esbjerg Kunst Museum, Denmark; Museum of Modern Art, Rome; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Artspace, Auckland and Museu de Arte de São Paolo.
Paul Winstanley
A Certain Kind of Light, 2017
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, UK
Paul Winstanley
Threshold, 2008
Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand
Paul Winstanley
Paul Winstanley: Paintings, 2004
New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury, UK
Paul Winstanley
Annexe, Art Now 12, 1997/98
Tate Gallery, London, UK
Paul Winstanley
Driven Landscapes, 1993
Camden Arts Centre, London, UK
Paul Winstanley at Whitechapel Gallery, 'A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920 – 2020'.
