Details

Haunted by Happiness presents the work of three artists each with an obsessive and repetitive approach to their subject matter: portraiture, landscape and still life. Encoded with symbolic values or readings, these traditional disciplines become a medium through which artists historically demonstrated their particular skill in and technique of painting. Now more often perceived as the concern of the Sunday Painter, they are reworked, establishing as much about the artist's own psychological state and history as about the current practice and the place of tradition within painting. Portrait - Over the last five years Ian McLean has painted the same two girls over and over again. They are looked at, scrutinised, photographed, sketched and painted, both in close up and full length, in colour and monochrome. They're pretty, young, beguiling and hypnotic. Infatuation, obsession and the role of the artist's muse collide with literary and filmic references to produce lingering, compelling and evocative bodies of work. Landscape - Revisiting the scenes of his childhood memories George Shaw paints the detailed urban landscapes of the outskirts of Coventry in the specific tonalities afforded by the limited colour palate of Humbrol Enamel paint. Drawing parallels with Christ's Passion these places are the spaces in between, or non-places, where momentous battles, secrets and romances of a child's imagination take place. Both romantic and oppressive they hanker for an innocence that only history can claim. Still Life - Plastic and glass bottles inhabit and reoccur in Paula Kane's paintings; stripped of product labelling, their contents often exchanged, they remain strangely familiar. Posed and lit they are transformed: plastic fabric conditioner containers become luminescent while glistening glass nail varnish bottles cast dramatic jewel-like shadows. Devotional in the extreme, each item she chooses becomes imbued with human characteristics with overtones of Catholic reliquary.

Creatives/Company

Exhibitor/Artist(s): Paula Kane, Ian McLean, George Shaw