ART
As part of the prize, he was commissioned by the National Portrait
Gallery to paint the double Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes. Wylie began work on the hyper-real painting – which at a height of 1.72 metres towered over the real Dame Kelly when she came to unveil it – in late 2011 and it has been on display in the gallery since just before the London 2012 Games.
So does a switch from hyper-realism to a deliberately flat and simple style mark a departure from what we’ve seen before? “Not really. I move between styles that inform each other,” he says. “It is true that for the last five years I have been painting predominantly from photographs on a massive scale, but this came about after years of painting from life. This exhibition is a return to painting from life on a more intimate, immediate and human scale with works taking days and weeks, not months.
“In fact, as a total antithesis to the hyper-real works, I have included paintings in this show that have taken minutes. Paintings such as Runnerbeans are equally as satisfactory as their bigger and uglier hyper- realist counterparts, for different reasons.” Wylie has been fascinated by art since he was a young boy growing up in the town of Masvingo in 1970s Zimbabwe.
“I’ve always drawn and painted, it seems,” he says. “My mother had a big green metal trunk full of expensive art materials which, from a young age, my brother and I would eagerly endeavour to ruin.” The leap into committing to art came when Wylie made the decision to switch courses at Rhodes University in South Africa, moving from journalism to fine art. Graduating top of his class with a distinction, he headed for London in 1998, setting up a studio among the thriving artistic community in Hackney Wick, east London. Since then, Wylie has exhibited at prestigious venues around the world – and is no stranger to the Jonathan Cooper Park Walk gallery, having exhibited there in 2008 and 2010.
“Jonathan Cooper is a gentleman,” he says. “He has been of tremendous help to me and he’s someone I consider a friend. He has always believed in me, to the point of buying a work from me when we first began working together – something I hope he doesn't regret!” With one of the autumn’s must-see exhibitions in Chelsea coming to his gallery, you can be certain he doesn’t.
The Accusation is at Jonathan Cooper Park Walk from October 18 to November 3.
www.jonathancooper.co.uk
Craig Wylie, Campervan 2012
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