“If I fall from grace with God.”
Paul Ryan’s hand and palette knife, heavily loaded with ultramarine blue, glide easily across his stretched linen canvas. “I have always been fascinated with the dandy character,” says the artist. “There is something about fastidious grooming and an impeccable dress sense.”
Ryan’s latest body of work, produced for a new exhibition at the renowned Nanda Hobbs Gallery in Chippendale, Sydney, centres on portraiture. The exhibition includes paintings of handsome colonial military men alongside portraits of, well, Shane MacGowan — the Irish singer-songwriter, musician and poet, best known as the original lead vocalist and primary lyricist of Celtic punk band The Pogues.
“You may think it’s a strange fit,” Ryan says. “These beautiful androgynous characters, alongside the stark ugliness of MacGowan. But for me, they all work perfectly together. MacGowan is the ideal subject for paintings that reflect both the beauty of poetry and songwriting and the landscapes of the New South Wales South Coast. Then there’s the depiction of the perfect-looking man — often uncomfortable, sometimes pompously overdressed — which allows me to explore the absurdity and, at times, the violence of Australia’s colonial history. It’s a theme I return to again and again.”
Ryan’s portraits of MacGowan are set within his trademark landscapes, imbued with a ghostly, almost otherworldly glow. Rendered with thick impasto, MacGowan’s bad teeth and battered features appear both exposed and adrift — figures that seem uncomfortable in their surroundings. The imagery subtly echoes the singer-songwriter’s long-standing health issues and well-documented struggles with substance abuse. Yet for Ryan, this is precisely where the beauty lies.
“The unkempt appearance of MacGowan mirrors my view of the landscape in which I live,” he says. “Where the escarpment meets the sea, the bush is chaotic yet beautiful — much like MacGowan’s lifestyle, juxtaposed against his perfectly crafted poetry.”
In contrast, Ryan’s portraits of colonial military men align seamlessly with his signature expressionistic and energetic painting style. Confident, virtuosic palette-knife and brushwork reveal the artist’s command of colour and texture. Watching Ryan work is a pleasure: sweeping arm and shoulder movements drive paint across the canvas with assurance and physicality. These figures — what Ryan describes as “androgynous” — possess dense, tactile surfaces that invite close inspection and reward prolonged looking.