Winstanley’s imagery derives from photographs, usually his own. He engages traditional genres of painting such as the interior, still life, and landscape, filtered through the lens of photography. The result is a photographic image with an unmistakably painterly surface. His paintings often depict repeated variations of the same scene: a landscape glimpsed through a window curtain, a barren, dimly-lit walkway, or the waiting room of an anonymous corporate office. Although these still, depopulated spaces are mundane, Winstanley suffuses them with a mood of melancholy or romance, revealing their psychological underpinnings.

Winstanley cites influences as diverse as Vermeer, Brice Marden, and Richard Hamilton. His work is both concerned with how the photograph mediates our experience of vision, and how the painted world can overcome photography’s supposed neutrality.

Born in 1954 in Manchester, England, Paul Winstanley lives and works in London. He was educated at Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry, England; Cardiff College of Art, Wales; and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Winstanley has exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe. Recent exhibitions include Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2005); 1301PE, Los Angeles (2005); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2002); and Tate Gallery, London (1998). His first retrospective will be on view at the Auckland Art Space in New Zealand from April 26 – May 31, 2008; a fully-illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Paul Winstanley is represented in New York by Mitchell-Innes & Nash.