John Shinnors (B.1950) Fox Hunting Sheep Oil on canvas, 91...

Estimate

€12,000 - €16,000

John Shinnors (B.1950) Fox Hunting Sheep Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 113cm (36 x 44½) Signed Shinnors delights in moments of visual ambiguity and confusion, something he traces back to a moment when, having established himself as a virtuoso painter of magic realist compositions, he became dissatisfied. One morning at a fishmongers he was transfixed by the sight of mackerel laid out on a tray, translated into an abstract arrangement of pattern, light and contrast. It was as though he was really seeing them for the first time. The idea of the familiar, tangible world transformed into a complex pictorial abstraction, while retaining the power of the source image, stayed with him. In this work we have a birds-eye view of the pictorial plane. The fox ‘pencil like’ in appearance, lays waiting, as the sheep traverse across the top part of the canvas, while his palette is typically monochromatic. He did not set out with the aim of becoming a professional artist. His attendance at Limerick School of Art could be described as casual - though the school was then overseen by Jack Donovan, an exemplary influence. After time spent wandering in England he returned to Limerick and taught art for a while. His early, highly realist style was usurped by the sudden realization that a painting could be more than a representation as such, that it could enshrine that magical, inexplicable moment of dynamic interaction. A master of a monochromatic palette, endlessly inventive with a distinctive visual wit, he's never looked back since.