Artist Statement - Julian Pinnick

JULIAN PINNICK
FINE ARTIST
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"Most people today think they are experiencing the world by snapping and passing on their experiences on social media, but a photograph takes less than a second to create, you never really look with the camera. When you make a drawing or painting it slows down your cognitive appreciation for the subject and gets closer to reality. Painting is a way of mediating reality, of having a conversation. It is interesting to be working in an environment saturated with technological imagery and to utilise that very technology, producing something by hand which has been looked at much longer and more closely than the camera or even the viewer ever will.  A painting will, hopefully, make the viewer look much longer than they look at, say, an actual empty doorway in the street. Street art, or art in the street, can often be interpreted as a sign of a decaying society, but it could be argued that street art in recent times has become the avant-garde, the true vehicle of free expression".
"The human figure is the most painted and drawn subject in the history of art. We are fascinated by ourselves. In my  work I often develope a cast of human characters from imagination and explore the world through them. Creating a world that is not quite ours but is like it, with familiar sign posts, recognizable artefacts and people, but not quite as we may expect to find them.
In employing this vehicle, I am exploring the existential definition of being human and the absurdity of existence, situating my subjects in a world between worlds. Like the Big Issue vendor in my painting, A Friendly Face, these people are living in the margins, but as they all wear strange yet similar clothing perhaps it is us, the viewers, who are the outsiders here. It is we, who are seeking familiar cultural references to decipher who these people might be."

"What is it like to be a human being? Life tells us what it is like to be human by relating to, or dealing with, our existence in the physical world. But we live our lives for the most part internally, so how do we describe what that inner life is like? And, if most of our life is about what goes on in our heads, how well do we know anyone?
It has been suggested to me that this work is more to do with self-exploration. In these pieces I am looking at myself and how I feel about living in a changing world. I hadn't seen it that way but having considered the possibility there may be some truth in that.
For artists and painters, it is their experience of life in the present which is reflected in their art. Artists very often draw on their feelings, emotions, nagging doubts, or demons to create their art. This is true for me as much as anyone else."

JULIAN PINNICK
FINE ARTIST
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