Guy Kinnear, exploring historic narratives

I am a contemporary figurative artist exploring historic narratives through collaborative processes. My most current artwork focuses on the myths of the Homunculus, or manufactured humans. The most famous characters of these myths are the Golem, Pinocchio, Frankenstein, and the Android. This research been coupled with my current explorations in off-the-grid living and permaculture. Together my findings are used as a vehicle to explore current questions about the natural, the synthetic, and how they relate to place.

I am also developing a body of Capriccios: mixed media drawings on transparent layers of transparencies as a place to experiment in stream of consciousness play. Aesthetically, they are heavily influenced by the works of Albrecht Durer but I have also been researching the surreal pop aesthetics of Winsor McCay & Jean Giraud Mobius. The figures are built from bone, to muscle, to skin, to multiple possibilities of clothing & props through a set of successive layers of mixed media drawings on translucent material. With each layer I consider the possibilities of how a character’s history would affect physiology and gesture. In process I explore new applications of old narratives by re-editing or combining previously disassociated narratives.

My past work involved collaborative experiments in narrative portraiture. By meditating on the primary narrative in dialogue with another human life and drawing from historic aesthetics, my horizons are broadened. Hopefully, the created art object will be partly history, partly documentation, and partly its own living narrative, an embodiment of what I’ve learned at the intersection of subject, object, and media.
Guy Kinnear
Oct 26, 2016

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