Paul Winstanley

Paul Winstanley 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.

In this body of work, the artist traveled throughout the summer months of 2011 and 2012 ummer months to art schools in England, Scotland, and Wales, photographing their interiors unaltered and in natural conditions, which became the source material for his paintings. The resulting paintings on panel are saturated with the creative potential offered by their ethereal emptiness. Both poetic and contemplative, the artist studios depicted in the paintings document the undefined creative act: completed, imagined, or unrealized. Through the luminous absence of these spaces, Winstanley gives tangible weight to the aesthetic unknown.

About Paul Winstanley
Paul Winstanley was born in Manchester in 1954 and 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 (2012); and Window to the World, Museo Cantonale d’arte and Museo d’arte, Lugano, Italy (2012). 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.