Detail of whisperers 3 by Robin Megannity

Oil on linen painting of a woman whispering in a mans ear 

Robin Megannity imbues his images with the retro appearance of traditional oil paintings. Unusually for a contemporary artist, he makes use of oil paint's illusionistic potential, building up fictional scenarios in fine layers to suggest real-life scenes. He employs a changing cast of actors to pose with apparently meaningful gestures amid an assortment of symbolic props. Muted colours create claustrophobic shadows, and cryptic titles add to an atmosphere of narrative suspense. Megannity’s works operate as glimpses of storylines, petrified into enigmatic yet intriguing mysteries.

In the oil painting whisperers 3, Megannity plays with composition: his two subjects are unusually cropped, so close up that most of their faces are peculiarly obscured. The possibilities of privacy and intimacy, recurring themes for Megannity, play out within the work: the cropping, the detailed, naturalistic rendering of the pair and the corporeal tangibility of the act and the message passing between them, are undercut by the mystery that, for us, defines them: as Megannity tests the functions and paradoxes of painting, the viewer is allowed an intimate view of the whispering, but its content and context are entirely, paradoxically obscured.

Robin Megannity's painting 'on oath', 2023 Oil on linen 67 x 51 cm 26 3/8 x 20 1/8 in: a glitched painting of a Dutch still life painting

Exhibition Feature Image

Installation shots of Robin Megannity's exhibition 'Call of The Void' at Workplace | London

Robin Megannity

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Robin Megannity

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London

Newcastle