B RIA N SAY ER S
Front cover: The Big Cheese 2019 oil on canvas 152 × 162 cms (detail)
B RIA N S AYE R S The Painter’s Table 22 September – 27 October 2021
LONG & RYLE 4 John Islip Street, London SW1P 4PX t : +44 (0) 20 7834 1434 e: gallery@long-and-ryle.com • www.longandryle.com • tues – fri 10 - 5:30 sat 11- 2
Encounter 2019 oil on canvas 71 × 86 cms
BRIAN SAYERS Brian Sayers paints objects, laid out on table-tops, almost resembling altarpieces. Sayers has been pre-occupied with this subject, almost without exception, since he first exhibited with Long & Ryle in 1992. This exhibition ‘The Painter’s Table’ continues to explore Sayers’ fascination with assembling and reassembling various household vessels and implements, giving them a mysterious sense of grandeur. Sayers imbues the objects with a status, as if displayed in a museum and we can only guess as to their meaning within the language of still life. The paintings in this exhibition are an assortment of everyday objects, some related to the kitchen or even the laboratory. These pictorial landscapes of objects are contrasted with allusions to hidden events or dramas involving figures quoted from other art works, which we see in Breughel’s Icarus for example or Piero’s Flagellation. In ‘Encounter’ 2019 a version of Diana and Actaeon is played out behind a selection of non-descript bric-a- brac. Similarly in a ‘Dolls House’ a domestic drama (borrowed from Degas) can be glimpsed in the downstairs room. Sayers likes the potential for ambiguity and multi-layering in painting, the scattering of clues and riddles. A glass case of trapped winged plaster casts in the Louvre provided the models for lurking angels, a foil to the ‘earthbound’ objects. Remains of butterflies and moth carcasses reinforce the ‘Icarus’ theme. Brian Sayers is a former winner of The Discerning Eye Award, prize winner in The Hunting Art Prizes and has recently been selected for the John Moores Painting Prize Exhibition (2020) at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. He graduated from the Slade School of Art in 1978. His works are in a number of important collections and he is also regularly exhibits in the BP Portrait Award exhibition held at the National Portrait gallery. “The broad, sure brush-strokes, and unfailingly secure sense of linear design (laid bare when you view his drawings) are in tension with a figuratively precarious arrangement. An ornate shell teeters on a corner, signalling something rarely permitted within his other works: we are not only invited to scan the objects clustered together, but are also allowed a discomforting view over the table’s edge, where, if the foremost items were given a careless shove, the shell or another perilously poised object may tumble, either into the drawer gaping below, or into the void; falling not only from the table but perhaps out of the painting.” – Jeffrey Dennis on ‘Encounter’ by Brian Sayers
Abstract 2018 oil on panel 20.5 × 25.5 cms
5 Objects 2020 oil on canvas 30.5 × 40.5 cms
The Painters Table 2019 oil on canvas 100 × 100 cms
Composition 2020 oil on canvas 25 × 30 cms
Cup And Funnel 2020 oil on panel 27 × 34.5 cms
Painters Table I 2015 watercolour on paper 26.5 × 31.5 cms
Painters Table II 2015 watercolour on paper 28.5 × 32.5 cms
Still Life with Cornflower 2018 oil on panel 36 × 47 cms
The Moralists 2020 oil on canvas 40 × 40 cms
Still Life with Open Book 2020 oil on panel 25 × 31.5 cms
Still Life with Pink Rose 2018 oil on panel 38 × 40 cms
Still Life with Rodin Sculptures 2021 oil on canvas 100 × 100 cms
The Chinese Vase 2021 oil on panel 23.5 × 19.5 cms
The Mathematician 2020 mixed media on paper 27 × 24 cms
Lemon Funnel Shell 2021 oil on canvas 39 × 47 cms
The Big Cheese 2019 oil on canvas 152 × 162 cms
Still Life with Fig Leaves 2018 oil on canvas 100 × 110 cms
Shell And Jug 2020 oil on panel 17 x 22 cms
BRIAN SAYERS
Date of birth 03.10.54 Education
Slade School of Art (1974-78)
Solo exhibitions
Long & Ryle, London 2017 Long & Ryle, London 2013 Long & Ryle, London 2010 Long & Ryle, London 2007 John Brown Publishing, London 2003 Long & Ryle, London 2001 Loewwood Museum, Herts 2000 Long & Ryle, London 1998 Long & Ryle, London 1996 Hohental & Littler, Munich 1995 Long & Ryle, London 1992
Selected exhibitions
John Moores Painting Prize DRAW Art Fair Hunting Art Prizes Royal College of Art, London Hunting Art Prizes Royal College of Art, London London Contemporary Art Fair Business Design Centre, London Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London RA Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London Riverside Open, Riverside Studios, London Royal Overseas League, Overseas House, London John Player Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London
Awards Collections
Second Prize Hunting Art Prizes (1999) WinnerDiscerning Eye (1996) Richard Ford Award (1979) Windsor & Newton Award (1978) Bank of America Trust Ltd Banque Paribas Simmons & Simmons
All works © Brian Sayers
LONG & RYLE