59 Paintings

In which the artist considers the process of
thinking about
and making work

Paul Winstanley

What does a painter think about when he or she sets out to make a work? Where do their ideas and inspirations come from? How do they begin to translate those thoughts into a painted image? Taking his own works as a starting-point, award-winning artist Paul Winstanley presents a series of texts that together reveal what it means to conceive, make and think about paintings. Among the varied subjects that he considers are how a painter seeks out and finds inspiration in life and the world; the relationship between observed and depicted realities; what constitutes ‘truth’ in a painting; how to approach conceptual and technical challenges; the role of the viewer in the transaction at the heart of painting; and the various belief systems that lie behind the business of creating and looking at paintings. The result, a rare monograph on the work of an artist written by the artist himself, is an exquisite personal account of the art and craft of making painted images today.

Paul Winstanley was born in Manchester in 1954. He studied painting at Cardiff College of Art from 1973 to 1976, and at the Slade School of Art in London between 1976 and 1978. He won the first prize of the Unilever Award at the Whitechapel Open in 1989, and two years later was appointed Kettle’s Yard artist-in-residence at the University of Cambridge. He has work in important public and private collections in Europe and the United States. He is represented by Mitchell Innes + Nash, New York; 1301PE, Los Angeles; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg; and Alan Cristea Gallery, London. He lives and works in London.