Exhibitions

 “There will always be an element of the unexpected or the strange in my work, hopefully tempered with a beautiful or elegant component, whether it be a face, a belly or the joinery of a favourite couch.”

The most recent work of John Oxborough focuses, as ever, on the figure and its placement in the interior environment and the landscape.

Oxborough draws figures from live models, set amidst favourite props and accessories - a wooden couch, a table, boxes, water or wine glasses, jugs, binoculars, a ball – all of which act as compositional devices and signifiers. The figures and ‘objects’, derived from life, imagination and the subconscious, do not tell us what to see, one can only guess their meaning. This allows the viewer to place them into their own forms of relevance, within the context of their own experiences.

Figures within his works are charged with an emotional presence; at times sexual, sensual, and psychological. The artist generates this intensity through the spontaneity and fluidity of paint –constantly over-painting and scrubbing back into the surface until the right tension is achieved. Oxborough freely experiments with the body, treating figures as line, form and space. For example, for the artist, faces can only be realised through the abandonment of trying to paint a face – instead he lets the face ‘grow’ on its own.

Oxborough realises and embraces that what he sees is not what a viewer will see. By merely suggesting a figure, the outline of a leg or the presence of a face, the artist exploits the feeling a figure evokes rather than dwelling on correct anatomy. Landscape and interior elements are developed in a similar way: through layers and suggested forms rather than definite, recognisable paths. Rather than giving priority to the ‘correctness’ of form, the artist instead focuses on the key question of creating a balanced and satisfying composition which has the correct emotional fibre. This sometimes leads to a painting portraying a figure with a deformed leg or hardly a hand or to layers of the composition folding over each other in impossible ways in a quest to occupy important space. Concepts of beauty are challenged with vigorous colour and aggressive strokes of paint creating sometimes discordant notes in the composition. But there is always a grace and harmony to be found for those who choose to look.

Qualifications: Diploma of Fine Arts (Honours) in Painting, Otago Polytechnic School of Fine Arts, Dunedin

Awards and Distinctions: Wallace Art Awards - Finalist (1992-2006); Norsewear Art Awards - Finalist (1999); Wilkins and Davies Young Artist of the Year - Finalist (1989)

Public Exhibitions: New Zealand and the Pacific, IPC Manawatu Biennial, Palmerston North (1991); A Range on the Home, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin (1990)