ERRATUS / STEPHEN APPLEBY-BARR / October 20, 2013 by Andy Goldsborough

I just returned from Toronto after attending Stephen Appleby-Barr’s second solo opening Erratus at Nicholas Metivier Gallery and it was sensational! I was invited to a private dinner for the artist and ended up being seated next to Stephen himself after the opening and I must admit I am still in awe of how talented this young artist is. When I started my blog last year I was hesitant to take on another social media platform and begin writing with all of the talented friends and fellow designers that I admire already doing this for years and what could I do that was different? What would be meaningful to me and what was missing from the world of bloggers was a different take on design, focusing on craftsmanship and details. I didn’t necessarily want to cover things that other blogs were talking about or if so, I wanted to capture the making of things and how handmade design still resonated with me and how I could educate or share my experiences with a design based audience. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine how many incredible designers, artists, and musicians I would meet in such a short time and Stephen is definitely one of those people.

Self portrait, late arrival, 2013, oil on linen 26 x 20 inches

Invitation, 2013, oil on linen, 45 7/8 x 30 7/8 inches

When I arrived in Toronto I went directly to the gallery and met with Nicholas Metivier and Greg Manuel to discuss Stephen’s new show and how his work has evolved over the past three years since I discovered him at the Pulse New York art fair and purchased my first work. I learned that Stephen has recently taken his own studio space after sharing space with a group he is still involved with Team Macho, but is now focusing on his work more intensely and his work is becoming more deeply personal and larger in scale. Many of the works in the new show are self portraits and other self personas as well as friends that have been taken out of context and placed in a magical world that is both historical and surreal at the same time. His Self Portrait, Late Arrival and Invitation (above) are so technically accurate that the stars in the paintings are astronomically precise. In a very short period, Appleby-Barr has captured a devoted audience of collectors internationally and the show almost sold out prior to the opening night.

To the Dark Tower Came, 2012, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches

Punchclaw On the Mountain, 2013, oil on linen, 60 x 72 inches

In his new show Erratus, meaning to go astray and make mistakes, Stephen’s fraternity has disassembled and been taken to a metaphorical road, the protagonist embarking on his own journey. Appleby-Barr borrows symbolic locations – the mountain, the garden, the cave and the furnace – from one of his most important literary influences, Northrop Frye. One of the first paintings in the new body of work, To The Dark Tower Came depicts a hooded messenger, one of Appleby-Barr’s facets of his persona on a horse with a burning beautiful sky in the background. The character is leaving something behind and there is dramatic shadow indicating moving on to another place. Also set upon a horse but after spending time in the Met and studying the details of armor in fantastically realistic detail, Punchclaw, one of his recurring characters is also embarking on a journey but the background is much brighter and of a very different mood. Both of these paintings at five feet by six feet are dramatically larger in scale and obviously turning points in Appleby-Barr’s journey. In addition to the self portraits and friends he has incorporated into the works, two new portraits of a recurring character P.T. Hose or Pantyhose caught my attention. Stephen shared with me “the character was created many years when I discovered a traveling water colour set in my grandmother’s basement. At the time I was watching a lot of Miyazaki, the famed director, animator and manga artist.” Stephen generously shared some of his favorite studies from this series of over 50 fantastic water colors and following them is my latest acquisition, P.T. Hose Reclining.

Watercolor study of P.T. Hose descending from tunnel waterfall

Watercolor study of P.T. Hose from above

Watercolor study of P.T. Hose peering into the well

Watercolor study of P.T. Hose looking back at the tunnel from a tree

Pantyhose awaiting the late arrival, 2013, oil on linen, 26 x 22 inches

P.T. Hose Reclining, 2013, oil on linen, 24 x 20 inches

The day after the opening Stephen graciously agreed to meet me at the gallery and discuss what went into the past year and the creation of these incredible paintings. He may have been slightly overwhelmed by the previous days opening and dinner with so many supporters, admirers and friends attending the show and seeing this come to fruition but I found him to be a humble artist on a fantastical journey that I feel lucky to be a part of. Getting his new studio and locking himself away for hours at a time was a new self discipline that made the works even more personal and introspective. Last year he even did his first etchings and plans on doing more in the future. When he described the process of the wax and drawing technique in which all of the details of the scribed surface get pulled out from the copper plate and the ink is transferred to paper it was as if I was speaking to an old master from another century. The following paintings hearken back to his first works in that they are diminutive in scale but say so much about where he is going as an artist. The show was beautifully installed and I have replicated the order of the Still-Life series below as they shown at Metivier gallery because of the presence they had as a grouping.

Still-life, broken vessel, oil on linen, 10 x 8 inches

Still-life, Ranunculus, 2013, oil on linen 10 x 8 inches

Still-life, Afterparty, 2013, oil on linen, 10 x 8 inches

One of the last paintings Stephen did was of a friend who works in a local bar he frequents. “Casey was the first person who asked me to paint a portrait of her. I was intrigued and after a trip to the Met studying the armor and details I decided to incorporate her stoic presence into this work.” In Stephen’s hands she becomes a strong character that is both steeped in history but also modern and the detail captured in the armor and how the light reflects on the embellished metal surfaces is really stunning in person.

Caley M.E. Jones, 2013, oil on linen, 26 x 20 inches

Volunteers in the Briar, 2012, oil on linen, 26 x 30 inches

Thank you to Nicholas Metivier, Greg Manuel, Sarah Massie, Rita Stuart, and Martie Giefert of Nicholas Metivier Gallery and my friend, the extraordinarily talented Stephen Appleby-Barr.

Erratus / Stephen Appleby-Barr remains on view at Nicholas Metivier Gallery through November 9th in Toronto.

www.metiviergallery.com

STEPHEN APPLEBY-BARR / April 12, 2012 by Andy Goldsborough

Two years ago, my partner and I purchased our first painting by Stephen Appleby-Barr from Nicholas Metivier Gallery at the PULSE Art Fair in New York. We were both drawn to the old world mysterious quality of his painting but also to the play of light that it captured on the canvas. We were told by the gallery that only black and white oil paint was used and built up to get this eerie glow which seems to illuminate the “Little Lord Dulac” work 2010. As a collector of chairs, I also liked the positioning of the figure on this larger than life chair, or throne, as I like to think of it. I was hypnotized by the work of this talented rising art star that has created a new, modern and exciting form of extraordinary portraiture painting.

Neither of us had met the artist prior to acquiring the painting but we both were fascinated by the technique and amount of detail captured by Stephen’s hand. One year later, we revisited the PULSE fair and purchased our second Appleby-Barr painting entitled “The Tradition Pit” 2011. It is larger than the first work and much more complicated but still has this mysterious, haunting quality and captures the light in such detail that it has an amazing depth to the surface.

Stephen and I tried to meet last month for the Armory Show but missed seeing each other so I caught up with him by phone to discuss his work.

Where did you study? Sheridan College, Oakville, Canada. What happened first? Along with 4 friends, he formed a collective of illustrators called “Team Macho”. They have had numerous exhibitions and share a studio together. In 2007 they published a book called “Fancy Action Now”. The group was like a fraternity of sorts to “keep their heads in the game, a way to keep up with their peers”.

Stephen focused primarily on illustration and draftsmanship in the beginning but evolved into oil painting as a medium to capture what he wanted to express in these beautiful old images he discovered going through his grandmother’s yearbooks. His first works also evoked some sense of a fraternity, complete with a mascot named Punchy who reappears in many of the paintings.

Who were his heroes in painting? John Singer Sargent and Diego Velazquez were there in the beginning but Rembrandt and Goya became significant influences as his work evolved as well as van Dyck and Vermeer. Appleby-Barr references daguerreotypes, the first commercially successful photography technique.

His subjects seem to stare back at the viewer and the scale of the works averaging 11″ x 14″ are very intimate capturing every detail of the subjects clothing and surroundings.

In March-April of 2011, Stephen sold out a show of new work and is currently working on another solo show to be announced. I cannot wait to see what his magic brush will come up with next!

Stephen Appleby-Barr is represented exclusively by Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto. Thank you to Rita Stuart at www.metiviergallery.com for generously allowing me to share these images on The Gilded Owl!