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STEPHEN MARTYN WELCH - Article by Avenal McKinnon
The striking quality of Stephen Martyn Welch's work is his sense of immediacy, the spontaneous naturalism of the quick glance, as if he had interrupted his subjects just for a moment.
Using a large scale format, he places his sitters well into the foreground of his composition so that they dominate to the point of being thrust forward into the viewer's space. Somtimes part profile, as though in the act of turning or tensioned slightly off-centre, his portraits, with their visible brush marks, exaggerated tones and deliberate lack fo finish celebrate the energy fo painting people from the life.
Welch approaches questions of identity, culture and circumstance through portraiture with a fierce concentration. Closely cropped stripped of the trappings of background and the symbolic clues of props, his portraits loom before us as utterly frank investigations of psychology. Stephen Martyn Welch is no glamerizer. In search of the wear and tear of human experience he probes beneath the surface drawing upon body language to create a mood, disarming his subjects with a banter of conversation to unlock the real personality.
The path to portraiture was not obvious for Welch when he left school in 1989. Disillusioned by an art teacher who had failed him 4th form art, he first joined the army and after injury tried various occupations such as delivering milk and working in a bar before making the step to become a full time artist. The catlyst for this was the birth of his son Scott in 1996. Diagnosed with Kabuki Syndrome (which is associated with intellectual disability, growth deficiency and hearing loss), "everything stopped" and Welch's life revolved around Starship hospital, burning his life's savings on medical fees for Scott and coming to terms with the constant possibility of losing him.
Painting became a consolation and a necessity, compelling him to record those around him. "It was an epiphany. Reality became all about people," he recalls. "There is nothing more important than people: who we are and what we do to each other:" A confessed dyslexic, Stephen Martyn Welch was fuelled by creativity, which enabled a different fluency, forthright and confident enough to paint beneath the glare of the T.V. camera. "This is how I speak - with the brush."
As a self taught artist, Welch's work is an extraordinary confluence of techniques absorbed from such diverse sources as the graphic work of action hero comic artists, Frank Frazetta, Norman Rockwell, Singer Sargeant, Bougereau and the British painters Jenny Saville and Lucien Freud. Drawing upon poses gleaned from the internet and models seen from the painter's studio above a busy Auckland street, he struggled alone, experimenting, trying to capture skin tones or the colour of stubble. "Quad" painted in 2005 is a demonstration that something as intimate as a portrait can still be a study of shape and colour.
However, it is as a compassionate observer, with the ability to literally confront social issues, which marks Welch as a strong new voice in New Zealand painting. 'P' pushes beyond the strict definition of portraiture, unsparingly depicting the senseless violence within our community. 'What's my Name' embodies the human predicament of Alzheimers, and 'Hope' with its enigmatic mingling of emotions conveys the uncertainties and vulnerablity of the young.
Avenal McKinnon