Matthew Krishanu
The artist Matthew Krishanu talks with Robert Priseman – founder of The Priseman Seabrook Collections – about Matthew’s work, being the child of a Christian Minister, memories and ‘mirror selves’.
Robert
Matthew Krishanu: The main impact I had from my heritage was the sense of always being between countries. I was born in Bradford,
In relation to my father as a priest, this has been a subject for a number of my paintings (my ‘Mission’ series). In these
My brother and I used to look in mirrors together and say hello to our mirror selves – as though they lived in another world. When I paint my brother, I remember him as a buffer between me and the world. Perhaps it is this strange sense of safety/vulnerability in my relationship with him that I like to project in my paintings.
In terms of painting in Britain today I am interested in the multiplicity of approaches and genres that simultaneously co-exist. I am pleased that painters like Peter Doig and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye have opened up fertile territory in relation to themes of landscape, figuration
Robert: I remember the very first painting of yours I saw, it was titled Two Boys (2012) and is part of your ongoing series ‘Another Country’. It’s an instantly captivating work which depicts you and your brother when you were growing up. Would you be able to tell us a little more about this painting and the series more broadly?
Two Boys
2012, oil on board, 21 x 30 cm by Matthew Krishanu (b.1980)
Matthew: Two Boys was the first painting in that series. It’s a small painting (A4, in oils on MDF). I was working from a childhood photograph of my older brother and me, standing in an empty water tank in a compound in Krishnanagar, India. The tower in the background belongs to a church.
While painting the subject I’d put away the photograph for a couple of sessions (I generally build up in layers of paint, allowing the oils to dry between layers), so used my memory to broadly sketch in the
Robert: One of my
Boy in Water
2013, oil on board, 21 x 30 cm by Matthew Krishanu (b.1980)
Matthew: Boy in Water is inspired by a photograph of my brother (probably aged five years or so), standing on a bank next to a lake or river in India. I was struck by the atmosphere of the
When I am painting a subject I am primarily thinking about the way in which to approach painting it, rather than the potential (and multiple) readings of a work. With Boy in
Robert: As well as having the potential to be interpreted in different ways, I feel a great painting simultaneously works on several levels. As a technical piece, as a work which communicates with artists of the past, as an object which connects to one’s artistic peer group and as a painting which speaks to a broad public. When we look at your work I am reminded of the French painter Bernard Buffet, only somehow more poetic. Who do you consider to be your influences – both past and present?
Matthew: I came across Buffet’s work when researching the work of the Indian painter Francis Newton Souza (who is a more definite influence on me). I like both of their direct subject
Overall a combination of narrative and loose application of paint is important to me. Historically speaking, I was struck by the Ajanta cave paintings in South India (I visited them shortly after finishing my BA), which are around 2000 years old. From a similar time, the faces in the beautiful Fayum funerary portraits from Egypt always stay with me (and from the range of faces depicted, I love how cosmopolitan the cities must have been then). In Western painting history, I am drawn to El Greco and was blown away seeing his works collected together at The National Gallery in 2004. In the contemporary sphere, Hurvin Anderson, Karin Mamma Andersson
Hermione Grammatike
(detail from Fayum Portrait Mummy, Roman Period) AD 1–100
unknown artist
Robert: One of the significant secrets of painting is that the best work is produced out of an act of great sensitivity. Each subject selected an immersion into the adored, each composition created an ordering of the
Matthew: I have always found I make my most memorable paintings when I have a close connection to the subject. Partly this is because I draw on memory for the works – if I don’t know the subject personally it’s harder to create a feeling and atmosphere in the piece.
In addition to the physical act of painting being a stroke, gesture or smear of paint, I think of the way the viewer beholds a painting. Do they glance at it briefly, or are they drawn in, physically pulled close? I am interested in the relationship the viewer has when they look at a work – whether the viewing is an intimate or distanced act. Painting subjects that I have a personal connection to and care about
In my next
Robert: Psychoanalysts such as Marion Milner and Donald Winnicott argue that we experience the world directly through our emotions. We then process these slowly and intellectually to come to some kind of understanding of our place within it. In 1953 Winnicott coined the term ‘transitional object’ to describe the blankets and soft toys children often develop intense attachments to. Subsequent theorists have expanded on this idea to describe transitional objects as the growth of a process which gives rise to the birth of memory, development of symbolization and creativity. It seems to me that your childhood photographs act in a way as a very sophisticated kind of transitional object which is then evolved much further in the act of painting. What would be your thoughts on this?
Matthew: The photographs have played an important part in memory forming (as a child my memories of particular events were reinforced by viewing them in albums), and particularly in adulthood I have found them a window on a childhood world that I remember more in atmospheres and emotions than in clear narrative. I lived in Bangladesh until I was 12, so all of my childhood memories are bound up in the country.
Communion
2017, oil and acrylic on canvas, 140 x 200 cm by Matthew Krishanu (b.1980)
During my
My brother and I used to look in mirrors together and say hello to our mirror selves – as though they lived in another world. When I paint my brother, I remember him as a buffer between me and the world. Perhaps it is this strange sense of safety/vulnerability in my relationship with him that I like to project in my paintings. In a
Robert: How fascinating Matthew, what an intriguing insight.
Finally, I would like to ask what thoughts would you like us the viewer to take away with us after looking at your paintings?
Matthew: I want the viewer to connect with the people in my paintings: to see them as real people rather than
Most of all I want people to be excited by the possibilities of paint: what has not been painted before, how individual paintings relate to a world of paintings throughout history, and the particularities of what paint can do that no other medium can – even in terms as simple as a fortuitous drip or an oily lump of colour.
Robert: Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on painting so openly with us, it has been really illuminating.
Robert Priseman, artist, collector, writer, curator
- The Priseman Seabrook Collections were set up by Robert Priseman and his wife Ally Seabrook in 2014
- Robert Priseman also features on Art UK as an artist, as his artworks are in many public collections
- You can see more of Matthew's work on his website: www.matthewkrishanu.com