Contextual Response
Talking Paintings Artists Talk: Matthew Krishanu
This lecture explored Krishanu’s practice through his technical application of paint, his love of materiality, and the themes that inform his practice. Krishanu’s process and application of paint changes between thicker, more sculptural paint and dripping paint, as seen in ‘Skeleton’.
Matthew Krishanu ‘Skeleton’, 2014, oil on canvas, 150 x 200 cm
This application allows for the merging of pictorial elements within the work. For example, the boy wearing white’s foot is blending with the skeleton; reminding the viewer that this is a painting. Within my practice, I am keen to explore the tension created by leaving elements of the painting ‘unfinished’. This theme of tension crops up repeatedly within Krishanu’s work. ‘Boy on Climbing Frame’ uses this technique to show gesture. This is reflective of my practice. For example, within my oil paintings, I have experimented with thinned oil paint where the pigment slightly separates from the turpentine. I then layer thicker, more gestural marks onto luminous cadmium yellow paint. My work differs from Krishanu’s as my colour pallet is vibrant, while his uses more earth tones.
Matthew Krishanu, "Boy on Climbing Frame", 2021. Oil on paper. 16 x 12 inches (40.6 x 30.5 cm)
Major themes within Krishanu’s works are community, otherness, representation, childhood, and religion. Krishanu’s painting explore and use his personal history with, photography as source material and his imagination to create compositions. His use of photography links his practice to mine, as we both use it as a starting point, to manipulate. I collage elements of photos to create new compositions. Borrowing an arm from one photo and a head from another to create a desired balance. For me, it’s essential to move a step away from photography.
When considering the canon of historical western paintings within art education, the faces we see painted and shown in major galleries are white faces made by white men. (Yellow For Art’s Sake, 2019). Although my practice doesn’t represent the disempowerment of the brown figure (Fullerton. E. 2022), I see the intersectional issues arising with gender, race and sexuality. My motivation for painting women is similar to Krishanu’s motivation in painting the brown figure: to re-write the narrative and create an active, multiple-layered representation, instead of the previous racist and misogynist discourse we have been exposed to.
Bibliography
Fullerton. E. (2022), The Guardian, Secrets of the seesaw: the painter harnessing the unsettling power of the playground. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/08/seesaw-painter-power-playground-race-empire-excluded?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1667927444 Accessed on 02/12/22
Haywood Gallery (2020). Available at: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/blog/videos/matthew-krishanu-paintings-everyday-heroes Accessed on 05/12/22
Leighton. Tanya (2022) Art Monthly, On Grief and Grieving, https://www.tanyaleighton.com/content/2-artists/16-matthew-krishanu/krishanu_art-monthly_-april-2022.pdf
Luke. B. (2021) available at: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/04/matthew-krishanu-interview Accessed on 05/12/22
Nahaul. C. (2014) Another Country, Available at: https://www.meer.com/en/7340-another-country Accessed on 15/12/22
Southbank Centre, Everyday Heroes: Matthew Krishan Hayward Gallery, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDngsTZH1oY Accessed on 04/12/22
Yellow For Art’s Sake (2019) Available at: https://www.yellowzine.com/post/representation-in-art-education-the-absence-of-black-art Accessed on 05/12/22