Lot 9 John Shinnors ENGLISH ALLOTMENT, WINTER

John Shinnors, b.1950
ENGLISH ALLOTMENT, WINTER
Oil on canvas, the larger canvas, 43 1/4" x 47 1/2" (110 x 120.7cm) the four smaller canvases each 14" x 14" (36 x 36cm); signed and inscribed verso.

Provenance: Taylor Galleries, Dublin - 'Disconcerting Transpositions', 3-19 May 2007; Sold these rooms, April 13th 2010.

It can take a while to figure out a Shinnors painting, because they zero in on moments when familiar things are caught in configurations that make them disconcertingly unfamiliar. A painting is a painted surface and, for John Shinnors, that single surface is also a consecration of surfaces, juxtaposed, overlapping, captures in conjunction and collision, dependent on a fleeting transitory combination of elements. Its when things are caught like that, thrown into disarray, when habitual perception is momentarily outflanked, that he sees the chance of a painting, and goes for it.

So it was that, driving through the South of England, he happened to catch a glimpse of garden allotments by the side of the road. Something clicked. The higgledy-piggledy patchwork of the allotment landscape, an improvised mixture of nature, organised vegetable beds, informal boundaries, and sheds and fixtures derived from a bewildering miscellany of recycled bits and pieces, the whole apparently held together with string, all added up to a perfect combination. One can see the appeal of domestic architecture, disconcertingly transposed and rearranged into a functioning but unruly parody of the everyday world, direct relations of the scarecrows that fascinate him.

In the English Allotment painting, he clearly relishes a new and complicated subject, a self-contained world that allows for the play of light and shade on a wonderland of spatial ambiguity. These are terrific paintings that delight the eye, and suggest that the subject might afford further material for exploration though who knows, the artist himself might feel otherwise. While he is known for the predominance of black and white in his work, it is as well to remember that there are many different black and whites, warm and cold, calm and shrill, available to the artist, and he has become adept at achieving a wealth of chromatic effects with most of them. That said, this exhibition sees a continuation of the move towards the incorporation of more colour and that was evident in his epic series of Scarecrow Portraits. Sometimes the colour is boldly stated, but it is there in subtle, understated ways as well.

With this body of work John Shinnors confirms his reputation as a skilfully thoughtful and resourceful painter, with something of a storytellers skill in terms of pace, timing and sense of humour. There is also, one could add, a musical quality to his treatment of recurrent themes, embraced each time with fresh and inventive openness.
Aidan Dunne, 2007 (extract from the Taylor Galleries exhibition catalogue)