Stephen Appleby-Barr | Night Garden

STEPHEN APPLEBY-BARR

NIGHT GARDEN

April 6th – May 4th, 2024

Stephen Appleby-Barr’s upcoming exhibition at Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Night Garden, features new paintings including works completed for his solo museum exhibition at Canada House Gallery in London, England, last fall. In 2023, Appleby-Barr also had his first survey museum exhibition in the US at Grinnell College Museum of Art, Iowa.

Living and working in London since 2017, Stephen Appleby-Barr routinely visits some of Europe’s most esteemed museums including the Courtauld Gallery, the National Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts in London as well as the Prado Museum in Madrid. He surrounds himself with paintings

by Old Masters such as Pieter Bruegel, El Greco and Diego Velázquez regularly so that their works remain “stamped all over [his] conscience” while in the studio.

The paintings in Night Garden are rendered in a grisaille technique, paying homage to Brueghel’s painting Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, from the Courtauld’s collection. In recent years, an integral part of ApplebyBarr's creative process has been to create sculptures from clay and wire to help visualise his fantastical characters in three-dimensional spaces.

Grisaille, historically used by artists to imitate sculpture in paint, is an optimal technique to work in while referencing his sculptural worlds.

In an effort to get myself closer to the physical act of drawing in my paintings, I began cutting up pieces of some old linen curtains that I had previously been using to clean off my brushes. I would cut strips of the linen and roll it into tight cylinders of varying thickness. Then I would use those to mix the paint on the palette and apply it. Not unlike an oil pastel only I had control over the amount of paint in action. The effect was immediate for me. Marks became possible that hadn’t been before. There was a sudden and direct connection to the way I thought in drawing that was now accessible with paint. - Stephen Appleby-Barr

Stephen Appleby-Barr Four Pearls, 2023 oil on linen 14 x 12 in.

SOLD

Stephen Appleby-Barr Shuttlecock, 2023 oil on linen 18 x 16 in. $ 14,000.00

Stephen Appleby-Barr Refuse I, 2023 oil on linen 70 3/4 x 59 in.

SOLD

Stephen Appleby-Barr Duck Boys, 2024 oil on linen 20 x 24 in. $ 18,000.00

Stephen Appleby-Barr Companion, 2024 oil on linen 14 x 12 in.

SOLD

Stephen Appleby-Barr Collector, 2023 oil on linen 70 3/4 x 47 1/4 in. $ 32,000.00

Stephen Appleby-Barr Builder, 2023 oil on linen 70 3/4 x 47 1/4 in. $ 32,000.00

Stephen Appleby-Barr Agitator, 2023 oil on linen 70 3/4 x 47 1/4 in. $ 32,000.00

Installation Images of Échelle at Canada House, October 2023

Stephen Appleby-Barr Renconnaître, 2023 oil on linen 70 3/4 x 59 in. $ 42,000.00

Stephen Appleby-Barr Refuse II, 2023 oil on linen 70 3/4 x 59 in. $ 42,000.00

Stephen Appleby-Barr Three Pearls, 2023 oil on linen 14 x 12 in.

SOLD

Stephen Appleby-Barr Scholar's Garden, 2023 oil on linen 36 x 30 in. $ 26,000.00

Stephen Appleby-Barr

Ball, Book, Bottle, Broken Vessel, 2023 oil on linen 24 x 20 in. $ 18,000.00

Stephen Appleby-Barr, Self Portrait, Ein Versuch, 2022 original signed etching with drypoint, aquatint and spitbite Plate: 17 3/8 x 13 3/4 in., Sheet: 24 1/2 x 20 in., Edition of 30

Stephen Appleby-Barr’s fantasy-filled artistic practice brings together influences from the history of art and literature, his European travels, and his community of friends who gather around his studio. His work draws inspiration from a parade of sources ranging from Florentine Renaissance architecture, Dutch still-life painting, Spanish Court portraiture, and stage and costume design. Even the smallest of objects in ApplebyBarr’s works — from tiny clay figurines and tea sets to piled-up espresso cups and cloves of garlic — are conjurers of inquiry.

In preparation for his paintings, Appleby-Barr constructs small sculptures and architectural maquettes to position his characters in other-worldly three-dimensional space. However, he emphasises that he does not seek to represent an “other world;” rather, he shines a light on the imperceptible worlds concealed within ours.

Born in 1981 in Toronto, Stephen Appleby-Barr is currently based in London, England. His work has been exhibited and collected in Canada, the United States and Europe. ApplebyBarr’s remarkable facility extends to printmaking. He has created several etchings printed with world-renowned Master Printer, Gregory Burnet of Burnet Editions, and published by Nicholas Metivier Gallery. In 2023, a solo exhibition of work by Stephen Appleby-Barr was presented at the Canada House Gallery in London, UK. Running concurrently, Appleby-Barr’s Correspondence, curated by Daniel Strong at the Grinnell College Museum of Art in Iowa marked the artist’s first major institutional exhibition in the United States.

NEW CATALOGUE AVAILABLE With essays by Daniel Strong & Nimco Kulmiye Hussein

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