Stephen Appleby-Barr’s The Plank, a fantastical take on the convention of Nature Morte, or Still Life, informed by the artist’s deep fascination with the uncanny and the surreal.
A cluster of studies and smaller paintings grouped together by a studio window. In the image you can see studyversions of the Owen Pallett portrait (center middle), Lemon Scout (right middle) and the finished version of Fort Ferris, 2015 (left bottom).
A pair of Appleby-Barr’s sketch books, which the artist is never without. The studio contains stacks of them, where eventual finished paintings are born. On the bottom right, you can see the initial sketch for Lemon Scout.
A taxidermied rabbit Appleby-Barr bought at Deyrolle, a 175-year old shop in Paris specializing in stuffed creatures of all sizes. The rabbit has become the model for many of the artist’s armour-clad figures. In one enormous painting in his current show, The Pale Path, the bunny is leading the charge.
Tubes of oil paint heaped in the box that Appleby-Barr’s epic Velazquez catalogue came in. A constant reference and inspiration, the Spanish master painter seems present in much of the artist’s work, where heroic figures and scenes are counterbalanced with fantastical imagery — armour-clad warriors with the head of a rabbit, say, or envelopign shrouds of pinkish-black cloud.
A cluser of puppet figures, which Appleby-Barr often uses to create the scenes he eventually paints. He’s recently taught himself how to make his own puppets, as well as their clothing.
Stephen Appleby-Barr’s Solomon, a classical portrait of a Pinnocchio-esque wooden figure that exemplifies the artist’s interest in fables, fantasy, and the surreal. Solomon, of course, is one of the central figures of Old Testament scripture whose greatest attribute was wisdom.
Stephen Appleby-Barr’s Lemon Scout, a wry twist on the classical portraiture of the artist’s idols, like Velazquez, whose own paintings were shot through with subtle parody and critique.
Appleby-Barr paintied this work, a fortress atop an impossible precipice, using a doll-sized birdhouse as a model place on top of a thick branch clamped to a work bench in the studio.
Appleby-Barr’s mise-en-scene for painting The Plank. He often creates his scenes, then photographs them so he can make very specific lighting decisions, from which he then begins to paint.
Stephen Appleby-Barr in his Parkdale studio, an aerie of a space tucked into an inoccuous, squat tower just off Queen Street. Filled with natural light, Appleby-Barr credits the space with an emancipation — solitude and peace to make some of the best work of his career.
Stephen Appleby-Barr’s The Plank, a fantastical take on the convention of Nature Morte, or Still Life, informed by the artist’s deep fascination with the uncanny and the surreal.
Stephen Appleby-Barr’s Parkdale studio resembles an aerie – a private retreat, high above the street-level din below – and it’s an appropriate remove for an artist whose work gleefully departs from the everyday and into the realms of fantasy and the surreal. A devotee of classical portraiture – Velazquez, the Spanish master, looms over all his work – Appleby-Barr nonetheless adds his own twist: Heroic figures with the heads of animals, or landscapes frothing with a gloomy, technicolour glow. Interesecting classical technique and sci-fi fantasia provokes just the right push-pull that makes you look, then look again: His painterly skill stops you flat, and the singularity of his vision holds you fast. Appleby-Barr’s new show, Sigillum, opens at Nicholas Metivier Gallery Sept. 17. 451 King Street West, 416 205 9000.
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