Kevin Sinnott: Liebestod
Flowers Gallery, London
12 January - 26 February 2022
KEVIN SINNOTT
Liebestod, 2020
Oil on canvas, 340 x 511 cm
© Kevin Sinnott, courtesy of Flowers Gallery
KEVIN SINNOTT
Pantygog, 2021
Oil on canvas, 200 x 177 cm
© Kevin Sinnott, courtesy of Flowers Gallery
Flowers Gallery presents an exhibition of new and recent paintings by renowned Welsh artist KEVIN SINNOTT. The title of the exhibition, Liebestod (which translates from the German as 'love' and 'death') is also the title of a central monumental painting, Kevin Sinnott's largest and most ambitious work to date.
Kevin Sinnott describes the scale and theme of Liebestod as "operatic" in its exploration of the tragedy of human love, fusing a personal iconography with references to the legendary doomed lovers Tristan and Isolde. Several paintings in the exhibition feature a supine male figure held in the arms of a woman, recalling the art historical subject of the Pietà . This recurring theme can be seen in Strong Woman, and Fallen Man, and is inverted in Goddess of the Dawn, where an upturned figure is held by his boots, the rest of his body appearing nebulous in a flurry of gestural brushwork.
During 2020, Kevin Sinnott returned to sketchbooks kept across the past 30 years, to "quarry," as he states, "themes invented or discovered throughout my professional life." The paintings that Kevin Sinnott made in response to the sketchbooks contain familiar symbols, such as the mathematical equation within Geometry Lesson (with reference to Cezanne), and the mines and valleys of the Welsh countryside (for example, in Collier's Boy), often recalling and reimagining stories of local people.
Kevin Sinnott's paintings are characterised by a strong sense of movement, with rhythmic relations between line and billowing passages of colour. The paintings often begin with an emphasis on composition and lyrical mark making, as seen in the dynamic configuration of opposing diagonal forces in the painting Pantygog, where the dramatic pitch of the town in the distance meets the vigorous counterpose of the central figures.
KEVIN SINNOTT
Born in Sarn, South Wales in 1947, Kevin Sinnott trained at Cardiff College of Art & Design, Gloucestershire College of Art & Design and at the Royal College of Art, London. Kevin Sinnott remained in London throughout the 1970s and 80s, exhibiting in London, the USA and mainland Europe, before returning to Wales in 1995, where he has established himself at the forefront of the renaissance in Welsh painting. While his work is primarily concerned with human relationships, the influence of the South Wales landscape is strongly felt in his paintings. He was elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy in 2007. His work is collected worldwide and he is represented in many important public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Museums and Galleries of Wales; National Library of Wales; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; British Museum; Arts Council of Great Britain; Royal College of Art, London; British Council; and Deutsche Bank AG, London amongst others. His large canvas Running Away with the Hairdresser has proved to be one of the National Museum and Galleries of Wales’s most popular acquisitions.
FLOWERS GALLERY
82 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DP