John Shinnors trained in fine art painting and drawing at the Limerick School of Art and Design and held his first exhibition in the Goodwin Gallery, Limerick in 1978. Since emerging on the gallery circuit his development as an artist has seen his body of work develop out of the figurative towards an increasingly abstract approach. This very distinctive style, which defies commonplace classification, is what he is celebrated for today. The works by John Shinnors in the O’Driscoll collection are representative of the artist’s more abstracted canvases, the origins of which are rooted in the real world as evidenced in their titles. Of constant inspiration to the artist are his familiar surroundings in Limerick, St. Johns Street, Limerick (lot 41) being an obvious example as well as his fascination with kites, scarecrows and the circus. The artist’s palette, although characteristically restricted, is never monochromatic and is imbued with his chiaroscuro genius and layers of light.

John Shinnors’ work is represented in numerous public and private collections and has been widely celebrated. He is a member of Aosdána and an active advocate of the arts through the Shinnors Scholarship. Represented by the Taylor Galleries, Dublin he continues to live and work in Limerick.

Crozier’s approach differs from Irish landscape artists of his generation through its often dramatic scale, its vibrant colour and its bringing together of diverse shapes, forms and textures. While aware of the landscape tradition in Irish art such as that of Jack Yeats and Paul Henry, Crozier brings to bear a range of other traditions to this subject. The maintenance of a studio in England and travelling widely has enabled Crozier to retain an international perspective on the local landscape. His attitude reflects Kavanagh’s idea of privileging the best of the local, while retaining a sense of universality. Apart from European and American expressionism, Crozier’s understanding of the theme of landscape is also indebted to his interest in Italian primitivism and to the classical tradition of Claude Lorrain which centres on the notion of controlling nature and sculpting the land into manmade proportions. His almost childlike choice of form and colour highlight the visual complexity of the natural world while his flattening and simplification of form privilege the authority of art over nature.

Crozier’s fixation on specific motifs such as trees and rivers relates to this much older approach to landscape. The Dark Barn (lot 45) considers how the black form of the building intrudes into the nocturnal landscape. Its strange shape is inspired by a distinctive local tradition of building barns in Hampshire. As Crozier describes it, ‘They [the barns] have gone home to the landscape.... Their backsides squat in the grass’ . A shaft of blue light to the left of the barn coupled with the bright red shapes of the bushes to its right counteract the opacity of the black structure and evoke the disruptive reality of nature in all its glorious colours and shapes.

Dr. Roisin Kennedy,

May, 2010

ed. K. Crouan, S.B. Kennedy, W. Vann, William Crozier, Lund Humphries, 2007, p.41.

Dr. Roisin Kennedy,

May, 2010