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New paintings by Richard McWhannell In his April exhibition at Orexart, Auckland artist Richard McWhannell goes back to the future, presenting the biggest and strongest paintings he has done in more than a decade. In his new work, McWhannell revisits the self-portrait, ruthlessly zooming in on his own, stark and often-distorted face. Gone is the polite distance established between sitter and painter, subject and viewer. In these works there is nowhere to hide. They are totally in your face. Up close, the portrait breaks up, dissolving into loose, sweeping brush strokes of blue, bone and bisque, evoking a comment by painter Lucien Freud: “the longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real." The artist’s intense self-scrutiny forces us to confront not only his mortality but our own. These frank and expressive portraits are imbued with experience, melancholy and a fierce, ironic intelligence. If Martin Amis were an artist, his paintings might look like these. Richard McWhannell was born in Akaroa in 1952, and currently lives and works in Auckland. He studied at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury, and has exhibited widely and regularly since 1974. His work is held in major public and private collections throughout the country. This is his first exhibition at OREXART.