Opening Reception Thursday 27 November at 6pm

Limerick City Gallery of Art is delighted to present New Paintings by John Shinnors in a fitting close to 2014, National City of Culture year. In presenting this new work, Shinnors intends the works hanging in the majestic South Gallery to be seen together, with a prelude in the Anteroom Gallery. This presentation, at the end the successful City of Culture year, brings a fitting close, celebrating all that Limerick Art and Artists have presented.

When thinking about John Shinnors’ art, any attempt to fix meaning or classification becomes a fruitless exercise. Shinnors has always avoided swimming in the mainstream, and the large pools of colour from his distinctive palette have defied their initial abstract nature to reveal figures or objects from the everyday – cat, fish, clothes line, whatever he sees around him in the lives of others and his own. This under-painting has used the ‘glimpse’ to allow the viewer into the mystery – a chink of red or green behind the Shinnors palette has allows the revelation to unfold. His use of European master’s techniques to achieve light and shade, his nuanced break-down of colour is like the idea of snow being many colours. He uses bold brush strokes and detail in equally deft measure, to achieve the immediately identifiable Shinnors character that has delighted his substantial local, regional, national and international audience. Limerick’s delight in this Artist and his conviviality is matched only by John Shinnor’s enjoyment of life in Limerick City, with his touch bases and routines known and understood by locals. He is truly Limerick’s own Painter by Appointment.

John Shinnors was born in Limerick in 1950 and has lived and worked all his life in his native city aside from a brief period spent in London during his teens. He studied at the Limerick School of Art and Design under the influential Jack Donovan. He has exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally. His work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including The Arts Council, The National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland, Banks Trust, IFSC, Dublin, Contemporary Irish Art Society GPA and Ulster Folk & Transport Museum, Belfast, IMMA, OPW, RHA, Ulster Museum Belfast.. He is the recipient of several awards and was the subject of an RTE documentary ‘Split Image’ by Michael Garvey in 1997. He is a member of Aosdána and is involved in the promotion of the arts through the Shinnors Scholarship and the Shinnors Drawing Award. He is represented by the Taylor Galleries, Dublin.