Beschreibung:

John Shinnors (b. 1950)
Morning Interior
Oil on board, 82 x 85cm (32 x 33½ ")
Signed
 
In this outstanding painting, it is early morning, apparently, as dawn light blooms with a flush of pink over what could well be the profile of King John’s Castle. On the right, a white-garbed female figure looks calmly out on the awakening day. The red and white on the chequered bedspread to the left picks up the light, though the source of the light on the figure’s nightdress, or perhaps sheet, is not at all obvious. The warming glow might well come from within.
John Shinnors likes to pose questions for viewers, and often the first question is to make them wonder just what they are looking at. He is adept at taking staple elements of his pictorial vocabulary and presenting them in a way that recasts them as arrangements of abstract pattern. To some extent he does that here, but it as if he is feeling mellow, and the mood infuses the picture and extends to his being easy on the viewer. The various elements, including figure, bed, wall, curtain, window, the sleepy sprawl of the intervening cityscape and the distant, castle-like profile, are readily apparent and adroitly managed in a very clever composition.
Its energy radiates from a vertical division just off the centre, as the line of the base of the bed picks up and adds spin to the the line of the window’s glazing bar above, opening out the space and encouraging us to accommodate the elements to either side, the room’s interior. Generally in his work the artist favours innumerable shades of black, white and grey. They are in evidence here, as is his penchant for lively injections of red. He also uses muted blues to tremendous effect, plus characteristic tinges of ochre, and of course the generous colouring of that beautiful, radiant glimpse of sky. Colour temperature play a vital role.
Limerick’s best-known artist, Shinnors was born in 1950, studied at LSAD under the guidance of the remarkable Jack Donovan, and spent time travelling in England as a musician before returning home to commit himself to life as a painter. Early magic-realism gave way to his mature style which is, in its way, equally magical. Widely sought after, his work is in all the major collections.
 
Aiden Dunne, April 2023