allwood
stephen
Stephen Allwood was born in 1959 in Fiji, and now lives and works in the Wairarapa, New Zealand. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Canterbury University, has held numerous solo shows, and features work in public and private collections throughout New Zealand.
Strongly influenced by his Catholic upbringing, Allwood's early work portrayed icons and saints. Since then he has turned his attention to everyday objects, people and animals, painting them with deliberate streaks and patches of colour to create an illusory sense of distance from the subject, who regard us from the other side as if through an imperfect screen, or a glass pane glazed with rain.
For Allwood, the works are as much about the act of painting as they are about the subject.
dessert
29 March - 23 April 2016
Stephen Allwood ignores the sugar ban to put sumptuously glazed and melting desserts back into the heart of the home. Generous canvases capture the glamour of food - the wink of crystal, the icy rime of frost on a berry - all in bold, romantic swathes of paint.
fight or flight
17 September - 5 October 2013
Allwood investigates the notion of 'fight or flight' - an experience we share in common with animals - to create a series of animal portraits that are both familiar and provocative.
faces
28 Semptember 2012 - 16 October 2010
"I wanted to express the ability of paint to, on the one hand, portray the luminous effect of sunlight on skin," says Allwood, "and on the other, to reflect the transitory nature of our mortal flesh".
