Ryan Hewett

Listings(s)

'Genesis'

The Barnard Gallery presents ‘Genesis’ - an exhibition of oil paintings by Ryan Hewett launching on the 4th April 2013.

Renowned for his brooding evocative portraits, in this show the artist continues his exploration both of portraiture and his passion for oil as a painterly medium.

Contrary to the tradition of verisimilitude, for Hewett the portrait is not about capturing an external likeness of a subject; but rather as a portal to an inner journey of self-exploration. Hewett does not use sitters or models in an effort to produce a realistic depiction. Although photographs constitute his starting point , he relies principally on the free-flowing processes of memory and creative imagination.

His portraits encapsulate the truism: that the subject matter of all art is, ultimately, the self.

 "Many of the works start out as self-portraits, but I try not to paint with preconception," he explains. "The images need to evolve on the canvas."

In the twelve years that he has practiced as a full-time artist, Hewett's technique has evolved from the tightly wrought pencil drawings of his early oeuvre into the looser, layered surfaces of his more recent work. This is due to his accomplished handling of oils which he applies to the canvas with quick, almost brutal splashes of the palette knife Through blending, building, edging, detailing and scraping off painterly layers, Hewett’s imagery is textured and richly hued, conveying both complexity and raw emotion.

Morphing from realism to abstraction, his portraits evoke a tension between external representation and what lies beneath. As such, Hewett explores the polarities inherent in the internal and external components of portraiture. He embraces the binaries between self and other, revealing that always the twain shall meet.

04 April 2013 - 16 May 2013

‘Enlighten’

Barnard Gallery is proud to present ‘Enlighten’ – an exhibition of recent paintings by Ryan Hewett. A year after ‘Genesis’ - his acclaimed debut solo show at the gallery - Hewett is back with a body of work echoing the brutal beauty of his earlier portraits, but displaying a greater fluidity that
accompanies his growing confidence in the medium.

These works are fewer but larger in scale and they are more intense in their interrogation of self and other. With his densely loaded palette knife, Hewett scrapes and moulds his forms, caressing, bruising and bleeding the canvas, swirling between the associations of figuration one usually makes with portraiture and the sheer expressive energy of mark-making.

As ‘Enlighten’, the title of the exhibition, suggests, Hewett’s unfolding trajectory has become increasingly spiritual, complex and paradoxical. For him, portraiture has never been about external likeness; it is about turning the inside out and the articulation of an emotional journey of self-exploration and discovery.

03 September 2014 - 14 October 2014