New Works

    At Winchester Galleries on Broad Street

    December 4 – 20, 2008

    Opening:
     Thursday, December 4, 2008
    7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

    Jeremy Herndl, born in Vancouver, attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1992-1996.  As an exchange student in 1995 he studied academic painting for six months at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts à Paris.  In 2003 he worked as a scenic artist for Disney in Tokyo. He lived in Poland in 2007. Currently he resides in Victoria.
     
    Herndl has shown facility in a number of painting styles.  He has learnt from the stylistic diversity which is deployed by Gerard Richter, Eric Fischl, Wilhelm Sasnal and others.   Accordingly, he often allows the subject-matter to suggest a style.  For example, certain narratives might invite, for him, a highly realistic treatment, while a Cubist-era content would call forth perhaps a Cubist style - or tribal, Freudian or intellectual one.  Herndl also values brevity and spontaneity.  He has noted, 'In immediacy is honesty. If you can pull the former off, it is apt to have more movement, substance and life.  Coming back to develop a painting results so often in a muddied image or buried movement.  Yet detail creates interest. How much is necessary for a given idea?' Niko's sweater, reproduced verso, is partly bare canvas and a few red lines.  The wake of the speedboat in another painting is almost all raw canvas.  Herndl, we may remark, is presenting simplicity or essences - essential colour, key form, flat understated texture (by and large), and the realistic content which they depict.
     
    The content has basically continued to be the urban environment.  Colour and shape have come especially to the fore since his time in Japan. Interest in progressive social, economic and environmental policies as modelled by the EU have been a particular interest since his stay in Europe.  His quite recent portrayals of news items and of groups of people evoke, to some extent, EU experience and concerns.
     
    To quote curator Carla Levinson, 'Jeremy Herndl shows amazing talent and dedication.'

Jeremy Herndl