Master manipulator

Andrew Barns-Graham looks for models with that special look ... then changes it.

Looking at an Andrew Barns-Graham painting, the nagging feeling of familiarity is evoked in the details of his muses.

After sifting through thousands of images, like a plastic surgeon, the Auckland artist modifies details of his chosen models to produce fashionable paintings.

“I alter the images to make them a little more ambiguous so that they’re recognisable but you’re not quite sure who they are,” Andrew explains.

“They could be someone you know; your mother, your next-door neighbour, your best friend or you might even find elements of yourself in there.

“I try to find that expression where it’s not too obvious what they’re thinking; there’s something going on but it’s not enough for you to know right away. You’ve got to come in with your own personal background of what it could be.

“Images are usually of women who are aware that you’re staring at them but they’re undeterred. They know that they’re beautiful, they know that you’re idealising them but they’re oblivious to your gaze.”

Having completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Elam School of Fine Arts in 2004, Andrew became interested in the exploration and definition of beauty.

“Everyone has their own interpretation of what they find beautiful,” he explains.

“People that I am attracted to are aesthetically good looking but tend to come from a deeper sense of themselves. What makes someone attractive is that glint in their eye; knowing themselves and being confident with who they are. That confidence exudes sexiness.”

Andrew says it was a natural progression to look at portraiture this way after his experience scrutinising idealised beauty within magazines and advertising.

His paternal line also precedes a history of endowed expressionists. Andrew’s father was a talented artist as well as his grandfather who was a war artist.

“We weren’t allowed in my grandfather’s studio while he was working,” Andrew recalls, “so whenever he went down to the dairy to get the paper and milk, I’d sneak in and look through his work among the smell of the oil paints.”

In his youth, Andrew was stared away from pursuing a career in art by his mother who advised that a more commercial form of art would be better for the bank balance.

Andrew began working in advertising and graphic design as a commercial artist, and would paint recreationally part-time. However, the more he painted, the more he wanted to become a full-time artist. In 2001, he enrolled into Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Art.

There he became obsessed with the face and the possibilities it presents as both a compelling visual object and its fecundity of thematic potential.

His most recent exhibition, Still, further continues on with his exploration of ideals and desires promoted by Western society’s obsession with the cult of celebrity. The cult of celebrity is a phenomenon we associate with the American movie industry as we follow week after week via television and magazine culture the enigmatic goings-on and latest developments in both beauty and fashion for the most prominent female leads in the movie and fashion industry.

The desire to identify with the most beautiful of our cinematic heroines has always been, and still is, a position strongly promoted by the magazine industry.

Today magazines such as Who and New Idea regularly go further on our behalf investigating in some detail the ways by which we might artificially enhance our natural attributes. Through their persistent exposure of the personal lives of celebrities, they make it possible to believe that we can defy age and alter our looks appreciably.

‘Classic’ glamour from the 1950s and 1960s is depicted alongside contemporary imagery to demonstrate the seemingly unchanging nature of western ideals in relation to beauty in Still.

Andrew teaches at the Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts in Pakuranga as well as a night course at Selwyn College and would love to take his students for an exhibition to the Big Apple.

In 2005, Andrew spent a month in New York visiting major galleries and museums and was blown away by the art centre of the world. His long-term plan is to spend a few years in New York when his fashion-conscious daughter Ophelia finishes school.

“When she walks out of the house with a far-too-short skirt on, she doesn’t complain too much when we tell her to change it. Like her mother, she is a very style-conscious young woman.”