This much-anticipated show is Stephen Allwood's first in Auckland for 18 years. Fifteen previous solo shows with the likes of Marshall Seifert, Campbell Grant and Bowen Galleries have cemented Allwood's reputation as a painter's painter. In this show he uses the device of the extreme close-up to fill the canvas, producing an effect as if we were looking at the subjects in a magnifying mirror, or through a window glazed with rain. In the end his works are as much about the act of painting as they are about the subject.

"Flesh was the reason oil painting was invented"

  - W. de Kooning

This well-known quote was the starting point for these paintings. I wanted to express the ability of paint to, on the one hand , portray the luminous effect of sunlight on skin and on the other, how the process of painting itself reflects the transitory nature of our mortal flesh. Several of the works also question the very nature of paint to represent a reality, though this is always an issue in figurative painting.

Sunshine 1 and 2  as the titles suggest, are concerned with the play of sunlight across the face - you’ve gotta hope they have sunblock on!  The feeling of ageing is apparent here through the painterliness; the physicality of the paint. The transitory, decaying, sense is also demonstrated in Vintner and Fringe.

Blind was inspired by a marble bust that has always given me a strong impression of staring, despite the obvious lack of eyes - hence ‘looking’ through the Venetian Blinds. The marble surface also strangely, seems to have the plasticity of skin. The unreality of Blind is also inherent in Icon and Bond, here playing with the opposite perceptions of reality. Icon is a real person portrayed as an early Christian Icon, while Bond is a plastic action figure made ‘real’ by the process of painting.

Siren is an ambitious attempt to portray light itself as something solid. Again Venetian Blind patterns, but here the light source is almost from within the face. The title was suggested by the figure’s haughty 50’s expression.

Self-Portrait and Veil are concerned with the idea of who is viewing who. In depicting faces, this ambiguity is more pronounced because the painting and viewer mirror each other. This mirroring, with the reflective glasses, is particularly striking in Self-Portrait where the viewer - viewed question is further heightened by the ‘presence’ of the artist.

Anna (6 views)  addresses the notion of  portraiture and likeness. I was more interested here in the differences between the 6 images - the ‘real’ person is perhaps the sum of these differences.