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THE VIEWS EXPRESSED HERE DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF ART SOUTH AFRICA OR ITS PUBLISHER, BELL-ROBERTS PUBLISHING.

Suns silence stopped- an exhibition of new paintings by Craig Wylie

This exhibition of new paintings by 2008 BP Portrait award winner opens at  the Plus One Gallery (89–91 Pimlico Road. London SW1. Telephone 020 7730 7656) on 3 March 2009 and runs until 27 March 2010.

Painters with longstanding South African connections have for the past two years won the prestigious BP Portrait Award, famously hosted by London's National Portrait Gallery on Trafalgar Square, diagonally opposite South Africa House. In 2007, Paul Emsley, a former drawing and painting lecturer at Stellenbosch University, won the award for an austere portrait of artist Michael Simpson. Born in Glasgow in 1947, Emsley grew up in South Africa, only relocating to England in 1996. He lives in Bradford on Avon. The most recent winner is a Rhodes University graduate, Craig Wylie. Born and raised in Masvingo, a town in southeastern Zimbabwe, 35-year-old Wylie fits the model of the award as it was originally conceived. Now entering its thirtieth year, this popular showcase of contemporary portraiture, for artists and viewing public alike, was originally conceived as a prize for artists under 40. The year Emsley entered was the first year under its new dispensation: anyone older than 18 can now enter. The inducement to enter is substantial: £25,000 for the winner, plus a commission worth £4,000. Last year Wylie netted the first prize with a deadpan portrait of his girlfriend, Katherine Raw. Similar to Emsley's portrait, Wylie's work presents its subject in an uncomplicated manner, straight on. (This photographic way of looking prompted art critic Brian Sewell, a legendary London grump, to write a rant bemoaning the award's slide into "dull incompetence and dependence on the camera".) Wylie's big win is not entirely unexpected. He aced his studies in Grahamstown, graduating with distinction in 1996, also winning Rhode's University's Rowney Painting Prize. Initially, Wylie set his sights on journalism, but by his second year decided on fine art. "I loved being at Rhodes," offered the London-based painter in an email exchange. "Grahamstown's isolation and smallness is key to its charm. It's a strange place, academia and experimentation situated in a rugged, estranged and poor part of the world. I remember vividly walking home from the painting school at dawn after painting all night feeling exhilarated with what I had done." Wylie's painterly style has evolved dramatically since his university days. His earliest portraits show the influence of gestural and expressionist painters, Bacon in particular. Over time his style has became more representational, although this isn't the whole story. "Having arrived at a certain level of accomplishment in this endeavour, I decided to throw everything out and started to make white abstracts. I had got to a point where I felt restricted by subject so made work dictated solely by what happened in front of me during the act of painting and my considered response to that." Gradually, however, he returned to his super-realist depictions, "both from life and using my own and found imagery". "I have found that my most interesting work occurs in the attempt to trap the reality of the subject, whether it be a photograph or a sitter. The closer I attempt to make the work like the subject, which obviously involves a high degree of acuity, the further away the work seems to get. It takes on a life very distinct to that of the subject." Wylie's artistic temperament and the intensity he brings to bear on his canvases, the most recent of which measure over two metres, differs somewhat from how Emsley expresses himself. Unlike Wylie, the older artist is not driven by doubt, his interest in rendering animal, floral and human subjects expressive of his belief in the "visible and tangible" in life. This was certainly evident in the scrupulous detail he brought to bear in his portrait of William Kentridge, exhibited last year at Cape Town dealer Elana Brundyn's i-Art Gallery. A statement appearing on the artist's website offers further insight. "I often draw and paint animals because I am interested in their forms, textures and surfaces. When drawing an animal I am sometimes struck by a particular part such as a tuft of hair, an eye or an area of skin. There is a kind of horror at its strange beauty and I am often startled by its resemblance to parts of our own bodies." Noticing and recording: this is what portrait painters do. I ask Wylie if the recent prize has been helpful in getting his work noticed and recorded by London's art going public. "Well, I haven't won such a well-known prize before. It has raised my profile in a city full of artists, many of whom are already famous. It is quite hard for one's work to attract attention in this city as the media is particularly focused on the big hitting shows continually pouring into it."

Sean O'Toole

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