Peter Monkman wins the BP Portrait Award

Peter Monkman's winning painting, Changeling 2, oil on canvas, 122 x 90 cm

Surrey artist Peter Monkman has won the 2009 BP Portrait Award . His winning portrait, Changeling 2, is part of a series of portraits of his daughter, Anna, at different stages of her life. Peter wins £25,000 and a commission, at the National Portrait Gallery Trustees' discretion, worth £4,000.

For more information go to the National Portrait Gallery

Yvette Coppersmith, until june 27, Chalk Horse, Sydney

Yvette Coppersmith's exhibition "Blue Series" at Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney is well worth a visit.

For more information go to Chalk Horse

To view Yvette Coppersmith's webpage Click Here



'Forever in Blue Jeans I', 2006, Oil on linen, 122.5cm x 81.5cm



'Forever in Blue Jeans II', 2006, Oil on linen, 122.5cm x 81.5cm



'Forever in Blue Jeans III', 2006, Oil on linen, 122.5cm x 81.5cm



'Forever in Blue Jeans IV', 2006, Oil on linen, 122.5cm x 81.5cm



'Forever in Blue Jeans VI', 2006, Oil on linen, 122.5cm x 81.5cm

Meg Williams, until July 5, Melbourne Art Rooms, Melbourne

Meg Williams is an artist worth looking into, her latest exhibition is at MARS, Melbourne Art Rooms. For more information on this exhibition Click Here



Young Wilson, 2009, oil on canvas, 50 x 65 cm


Small World : Paintings by Meg Williams

What is it about toys that holds such appeal for artists? Are they vehicles for neurotics to act out unresolved childhood troubles? Are the baby-boomers using them to retrieve their lost childhoods? Generation Xers use them to deliver ironic images that seem to evolve from collecting Star-Wars figures. As children we all acted out our fantasies with toys and perhaps, in giving ourselves permission to imagine again, artists tend to revisit that familiar world.



Meat Tray, 2009, oil on canvas, 45.5 x 61 cm


I don’t know why I started collecting toys. They could be worthless and broken but they had to have a certain look and I haunted Camberwell Market looking for figures with this essential quality. Eventually I had so many that they were bypassing the mantelpiece and going straight to the attic. It was a relief when the compulsion burnt itself out, though the need to paint the toys remains. I still go to Camberwell Market hoping to find interesting objects to paint, usually as props to go with the toys.




The Conversation, 2009, oil on canvas, 54 x 66 cm


When I set them up and light them I can believe that my toys are alive and up to something, just as they were when I was four years old. I love the hit-and-miss way they are painted that leaves them stuck with wacky expressions that suggest that each toy has a full inner life. I look at them with the kind of sympathy that one feels for the subjects of a Dianne Arbus photo; they are innocent pawns in a game of which they are unaware.




The Journey, 2008, oil on canvas, 100 x 100cm


Some time after I have finished a picture I usually realize what it is really about, and it’s generally something quite serious, but I never know its purpose at the time of painting. It’s a message sent to me from my unconscious, via the toys.

-Meg Williams


In The Real Art World thanks MARS for permission to reprint the artist's exhibition statement.

McDermott & McGough, June 4 - July 22, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris.

For more information go to the gallery website Click Here

McDermott & McGough
Without You I Am Nothing (New Paintings)








I cried for you, 1967, 2008, Oil on linen, 203,2 x 152,4 cm


McDERMOTT & McGOUGH



Born in 1952 and 1958
Live and work in New York and Dublin.

David McDermott & Peter McGough refuse to accept the contemporary time frame and thus live in what they consider as the most favorable period for them, namely the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Actually, McDermott & McGough live the Past as an existential provocation.

Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, until August 16, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese : Rivals in Renaissance Venice"
is the first major exhibition dedicated to the artistic rivalry of the three greatest Venetian painters of the sixteenth century: Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese.

To go to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website Click Here



Titian, Flora, about 1516-18. Oil on canvas.



Veronese, Virgin and Child with Angels Appearing to Saint Anthony Abbot and Saint Paul the Hermit, 1562. Oil on canvas.



Tintoretto, Susannah and the Elders, about 1555-56. Oil on canvas.


My Eye. Thomas Hoving reviews the Titan, Tintoretto, Verones, courtesy of Artnet TV

MAGRITTE MUSEUM opens June 2, 2009

The Magritte museum opens today with a display of 250 works over three floors, in a neoclassical 19th-century building on Brussels's Place Royal. The artist's famous candyfloss clouds, green apples and bowler hats will be displayed alongside graphic works and memorabilia, making the gallery the biggest Magritte collection in the world. Expectations are that over 650,000 visitors a year, making The Magritte museum a cultural must see in Brussels

Gottfried Helnwein, until June 29, Modernism, San Francisco

Gottfried Helnwein, The Murmur of the Innocents
It'll be well worth the trip to go see Gottfried Helnwein's latest exhibition at Modernism gallery, San Francisco

For more information go to Modernism



The Murmur of the Innocents 1, 2009, mixed media (oil & acrylic) on canvas, 77 8/10 x 114 1/4in



The Murmur of the Innocents 5, 2009, mixed media (oil & acrylic) on canvas, 74 3/4 x 126in



The Murmur of the Innocents 4, 2009, mixed media (oil & acrylic) on canvas, 63 x 91in



The Murmur of the Innocents 9, 2009, mixed media (oil & acrylic) on canvas, 65 x 79 1/2in




Helnwein working on the series The Murmur of the Innocents (The Disasters of War, part II), 2009


To see more photos of Helnwein working on this series CLICK HERE

The Influence of Photography in Painting, June 2- July 10, ROLLO Contemporary Art Gallery, London

The Influence of Photography in Painting at ROLLO Contemporary Art Gallery is a group exhibition of 3 international painters whose works display a relationship to the photographic medium.

Tiina Heiska (Finnish, lives and works in Finland)


Tiina Heiska, Crawling Girl, Oil on Canvas, 110 x 150 cm

The figure in Tiina's cinematic and blurred paintings is of herself in motion, creating a sense of distance from her self-portraiture by subjecting her imagery to this process of double detachment – from reality to photo to painting.


Antonio Santin (Spanish, lives and works in Madrid and Berlin)


Antonio Santin, Katrin Lola, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 90 cm

Santin’s larger than life paintings of women’s faces start with a model being photographed in his studio. When translating these photographs into paint, Santin disturbs his sugary sweet images by applying abstract gestures of paint over the surface of the photo-realist painted faces. A provocative gesture and a painterly violation of photographic intentions, whilst "simultaneously suggesting a celebration of the freedom of paint, enlivening an image from the flatness and fixed, controlled nature of the photographic image".


Andrew Hollis (South African, lives and works in U.K.)


Andrew Hollis, 2009, Untitled, oil on linen, 50 x 75 cm

Andrew Hollis starts with photographic images, taken from magazines and newspapers and translates these into paint, creating images with bold brush-stokes. The emphasis is on the materiality of paint in his work whilst nonetheless still consciously retaining the sense of a photograph,


For more information go to ROLLO Contemporary Art Gallery