Richard Winkworth was born in India and spent his childhood in the Far East. The countries where he spent his childhood, India until he was eight and then Singapore, (with extended voyages to Hong Kong, Thailand and Japan) strongly influence his work. He recalls the vivid colours of his childhood: the clothes, the hand-painted film posters and the polished brass containers. For a young child the heat, the noise, the torrential rain and the colours offered a continuous and wonderful onslaught for the senses. In these countries religion and spirituality were central to daily life, with vivid colour as an essential part of the associated rituals and objects. The colours, cultures and exuberance of Asia have been fused into him since birth. Winkworth draws inspiration from this visual bombardment, basing his work on the recollection of an aesthetic awareness that widely existed in the 1960’s/1970’s Far East.
At first glance Winkworth’s work depicts stylistic and vibrantly coloured still-lifes and, although he often paints altars and shrines, his work has no direct religious connotations. The cups, bowls, plates and jars, which outlive the civilisations that created them, are selected because of their strength of form and their purity of function. These are the witnesses of completely different kinds of lives, yet they are generally, universally recognizable, regardless of their origin or antiquity. Their function, and their primary shapes, have not been transcended or superseded since man first dug clay. They remain as trans-cultural, visual truths of our needs to store, preserve, and display or offer all the necessities of life: water, food, wine, oil, perfume, spices, gold and human remains. They are the basic visual symbols and relics of all civilisations; unavoidable however we try to ignore them.
As his work continues to evolve, Winkworth has simplified his objects, purifying them almost to the point of abstraction. Using a single line to denote form or a block of colour to suggest shape he has liberated his work enabling a depiction of less tangible subjects such as Kyoto Rock gardens or monsoon rains. He has also begun to explore the possibilities enabled by the ancient “lost” technique of encaustic. The gradual layering of wax and pigment combined, in some instances, with newspaper, gold leaf or found objects lends another tactile dimension to his simplified forms.
Richard Winkworth was born in Bombay in 1963 and spent his childhood in the Far East. He completed a BA Honours degree in Fine Art at Brighton University, UK, and then completed his formal training with an MA from the prestigious Chelsea School of Art, London. Since his graduation in 1986 he has exhibited across the world including Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, USA and the United Kingdom, most recently holding a solo exhibition at John Martin Gallery, London in 2005. His work is represented in the corporate collections of Unilever, Xerox, Mandarin Oriental and Adam & Co, to name just a few and can be found in private collections worldwide.
