WILLY VERGINER

WILLY VERGINER
Born in 1957, Italy.
Lives and works in Ortisei, Italy.

☁ WILLY VERGINER

JUSTIN MORTIMER

JUSTIN MORTIMER
Born 1970
1988-1992 Slade School of Art, London
Lives and works in London



Justin Mortimer's darkly enigmatic paintings are infused with an unsettling disquietude. His heavily worked, technically adroit canvases depict sinister and foreboding landscapes, often populated by fragmented figures and lurking, truncated body parts. These ambiguous and eccentric narratives embody potent psychological states, addressing issues of alienation, ontological solitude and the fragility of the human body. Locations that have borne witness to conflict, or moments of extreme human vulnerability are Mortimer's primary inspiration; images of battle sites, derelict wastelands, military graveyards and other places of heightened emotion provide the starting points from which his extraordinary paintings evolve.

However, before pigment touches canvas, each work is prefaced by a digital collage – a working drawing composed in Photoshop, built from the artist's extensive archive of imagery. Holiday snaps, photographs torn from magazines, found medical photographs and internet-scavenged images all find their way into these primary montages, which are created rapidly and spontaneously. Yet Mortimer has no interest in critiquing the role of digital imaging in the construction of private and public memory, rather the procedure is a pragmatic shorthand intended to expedite the creative process. These digital sketches are then transposed to the canvas, after which the physical painting process takes over until, returning to his computer, more collages are created to aid the advancing composition. As the canvas is repeatedly overpainted and redrafted, this to-ing and fro-ing between digital and analogue can often result in up to fifteen collages being created for a single painting. It's an unconventional approach, yet draws out unanticipated visual collisions that amplify Mortimer's underlying themes and emotive content. (READ MORE HERE)



☁ JUSTIN MORTIMER

BRIAN DONNELLY

BRIAN DONNELLY /// OBEDIENCE AND SAVAGERY

New show @ the Show and Tell Gallery, Toronto, running through November 28, 2010.

Brian views his work as a way to settle his own selfish whims, while exploring art and art culture through representational painting.

BRIAN DONNELLY embraced his current mode of creation through frustration and destructive behavior. These aspects in conjunction with a need to breathe new life into his 'otherwise stagnant' figurative practice led Brian to the actual 'spoiling' of paintings through the obliteration of elements. In doing so Brian began to think about his work's importance within art culture, and question whether or not vandalism is destructive, or procreative.

These ideas were amplified greatly with the reading of books like 'The Island of Doctor Moreau' and 'Frankenstein'. In both stories the title character acts on rather rash and selfish impulse, without considering consequence, merely working to please the ego. Looking deeper, both are tales of inhuman cruelty and deplorable scientific practice. It was these two books that set Brian searching for a way to apply that type of selfish cruelty to his primarily visual medium.

The aim became not to recreate works based on fiction, but to create his own vision of cruelty. Modeling himself after the hap-hazard doctors of fiction, by substituting their scientific practice for his artistic practice, Brian has become a fierce and unforgiving editor of art; the antagonist of his own creations



☁ BRIAN DONNELLY
☁ BRIAN DONNELLY PREVIOUSLY ON LE ZÈBRE

MALCOM LIEPKE

There is a timeless quality to the paintings created by Malcolm T. Liepke. His imagery transplants viewers to a bygone era of late night haunts, couples lingering in smoky rooms and intimate private moments. While timeless, the imagery still manages to retain a distinct, contemporary flair. The sublime beauty of his subjects, often women lost in contemplation, are imbued with a sense of melancholy. The brushwork; thick, lush and bold make the canvas “breathe” with an intensity not often found in today’s more “antiseptic” art world. “I look at my own world and paint it,” says Liepke, “but I also want my paintings to be ultimately timeless. I’m a channel to express the human condition.”

Liepke’s fascination with the art world began at a young age. During his senior year of high school, he realized that being an artist was the “only thing I was cut out to be.” So he packed his bags and moved from his native Minnesota and moved to California where he enrolled in the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He soon became frustrated, however, with the curriculum that emphasized abstraction and conceptual art. After a year and a half, he dropped out. “They weren’t going in the direction that I wanted to go,” he explained. “They were promoting superficial and trendy techniques. I wanted to learn from the masters that I saw in the museums.”

Liepke, who was and continues to be drawn to the work of the 19th-century masters, did just that. He headed east to New York’s finest museums where he studied the work of Sargent, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Vuillard, absorbing technique and discipline while developing a unique vision all his own.

From the beginning, Liepke was drawn to the figure. “It’s not really like anything else,” he explains. “In landscapes, there can certainly be a great deal of emotion, but it is a different kind and not as strong to me as looking at the figure. There is a timeless quality to figurative painting that I really enjoy. If I look at a Rembrandt, while the clothing is certainly different, the people remain the same. They have not changed in hundreds of years. The emotional contact you get from looking at someone’s face is what inspires my work.”

In the early part of his career, Liepke began working in the world of illustration and by the early 1980’s, he had earned an award-winning reputation as an illustrator with works appearing in magazine like Time and Forbes. Over time, Liepke grew tired of the lack of control in terms of subject matter, and by the mid-80’s decided to strike out on his own and become a full-time artist.

Liepke’s commitment to traditional figurative painting coincided with the resurgence of figurative painting in general. “I came at a pretty good time. It wasn’t as difficult to find success painting figures in a realist style during the 80’s as it would have been in the 50’s or 60’s. Artists like Lucien Freud helped carve some paths, which helped me enormously,” he says.


Not that Liepke really needed any assistance anyway. From his very first exhibition in 1986, all of the works in his shows have sold out. From Hong Kong to Los Angeles and London to New York, Malcolm Liepke’s works are much sought after and his audience continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

☁ MALCOM LIEPKE @ ARCADIA FINE ART
☁ MALCOM LIEPKE @ ALBERMARLE GALLERY

JURAJ ANUSEV

☁ JURAJ ANUSEV