Amsterdam

Deborah Poynton has known Ilsa her whole life. She was her mother’s friend, her art teacher when she was a toddler and again at school as a teen; she has been mentor, ally, model and muse. Deborah first drew Ilsa in 1982, when she was 12, and has continued to do so ever since. Stevenson is pleased to present Poynton’s latest such painting, A Thin Veil, in our Amsterdam space – the entire gallery given over to this singular piece. Showing just one work, ‘één werk’, is also a quiet tribute to Julius Vermeulen, the maverick designer and gallerist who passed away in February of this year. He was the founder of EENWERK, an Amsterdam gallery based on the premise of showing single works.

Of the title Poynton writes:

A painting is like a thin veil, hanging suspended between me and the unknowable. As I peer through this veil, I can glimpse reality in softened, reduced tones, artfully selective, brutally reductive.

The world itself is veiled from us. We exist on a curtained stage, enacting our self-important roles as we pursue our imaginary dreams. Birth and death are the violent partings of this curtain, beyond which we know nothing.

Life is full of paradox. We invent what we see. We desire what we don’t have. We believe what we can’t know.

Painting embodies this paradox. The veil of the painting protects me, its thousands of small brushstrokes weaving something out of nothing. The act of painting lends meaning to my existence, even as I try to efface myself behind this shimmering illusion.

And of painting the particular people who recur in her works, she observes:

Painting someone is an act of love. My brush creeps over their skin, the lines of their face, their strands of hair, in awe at how life-like they are.

I paint very few people, over and over again. I lead a parallel existence with these people, in the world of my paintings, hauling them along with me always, keeping them close. I feel driven to use these particular people because I love them, and love is unbearable.

I feel as if I eat them whole, there is a merging of me and them which has nothing to do with portraiture. Once they’ve been consumed, I lurk there behind the image, sated, knowing that I can’t lose them now.

Until it dawns on me that I have captured only air, and I am forced back into the unending labour, weaving my intricate web. In the end, a painting is just a leftover husk, a byproduct of my endless attempt to have and to hold.

Ilsa's presence in Poynton's work over the years is documented in this catalogue PDF - click to view.

The exhibition opens on Saturday 2 November from 11am to 1pm; the gallery is open till 6pm.