Disabled contemporary painter Martin Kinnear (b. Burnley, Uk, based in London) is known for creating thematic shows about self-perception, imperfection and change informed by his experience of physical disability and social exclusion.

Working from poems or ‘word sketches’, Kinnear slowly creates layered and contradictory paintings which explore the role of absences and ambiguity in formulating our self-concept.

Through expressive figurative marks which  communicate whilst also withholding narrative, Kinnear intends the visual consumption of his work to reveal the difference between what we appear to be and whom we are echoing Auden’s observation about ‘the flesh the mind insists is ours.

He is best known for large-scale contemporary triptychs featuring optically layered and partially excavated oils, gloss, enamel, dry media and encaustic paints (e.g. Lethe {exh. Regeneration at The Bowes Museum County Durham}, 2022).

Notable exhibitions: Regeneration at The Bowes Museum (public gallery), County Durham.

Collections: Government Art Collection UK, Collection of St Mary’s College, University of Durham.

Participated in: Chaiya Art Awards (biennial), SNBA Salon de Beaux-Arts, Paris 2022, SNBA Salon des Beaux-Arts, Paris 2019, SNBA Salon des Beaux-Arts, Paris 2018.

Notable Shows: His most notable show to date, Regeneration(The Bowes Museum County Durham), featured a work chosen by the then Prime Minister for the UK Government Art Collection, and demonstrated how he creates work of ‘how the world we make, comes in time to make us’. Kinnear also participated in three consecutive Paris Salons of the Societie Nationale des Beaux Arts in 2018-19-22. (participation in the salon was suspended in ‘21 for foreign nationals in and the event cancelled in ‘20 for Covid reasons).

Martin Kinnear: Painting is what I do.

One can have various motivations to paint. I have never needed one because for me the act of painting is the point of doing it. I know this to be true because when I became disabled I painted from my hospital bed

For the last 20 years I have fought against the insistence of painting to impose a subject upon me, but have come to accept that all painting done honestly is always a self-portrait: since I became disabled in my thirties, I am compelled to create paintings about what it is to be imperfect.

Art mirrors life; just as I learned again walk, to speak and recreate myself, I break and rebuild presences in my work, figures which are compelled to take the forms offered to them and the shapes which remain.

Over time they coalesce from broken abstracted surfaces into figural presences which seem to mirror my own experience; in this way all of my works are portraits.     

For someone like me who doesn't want to be disabled this is problematic. As long as I live, I will paint. And as long as I am alive, my work can only be a mirror.   I don't like what I see, but I do it anyway.    

Recent Exhibitions & Awards 

2024

MA Painting: RCA (24/25)

9 Oct - 16 Nov Messums London. Emerging Landscape Painting Today (selected for extended online show and symposium)

2023

October: Invited exhibitor and speaker University of Durham. Elected SCR.

April 7th - 16th Chaiya Art Awards - Southbank London

19th April - 7th May: Martin Kinnear. New Works, Solo Show Tennants Gallery, North Yorkshire

June 9th - 16th - The Gallery at Sedbury ,Richmond 

2022

Martin Kinnear, Societie Nationale des Beaux Arts Salon, Paris.

Martin Kinnear, Regeneration, Solo Show, The Bowes Museum, County Durham

Martin Kinnear. Works from Regeneration, Solo Show ,Tennants Gallery, North Yorkshire

2021

Martin Kinnear, Landscapes of The North, Solo Show, Tennants Gallery, North Yorkshire

2020

Martin Kinnear, 'Backstreet Burnley', Govt. Art Collection for Downing St

Martin Kinnear, Lefty's North, Solo Show, Tennants Gallery, North Yorkshire

Artist in Residence, Norman Cornish Retrospective, The Bowes Museum.

2019

Martin Kinnear, Societie Nationale des Beaux Arts Salon, Paris.

The Holt Festival, Auden Gallery, Holt. 

2018

Martin Kinnear, Beyond Here, Solo Show, Tennants Gallery, North Yorkshire

Martin Kinnear, Societie Nationale des Beaux Arts Salon, Paris.

Awarded Medaille d' Argent for Peinture. 

2017

Iona Gallery, Woodstock, Oxon. 

2016

Martin Kinnear, The Painted Garden, Solo Show, New British Art Gallery, Norfolk

Critical Response ‘Burnley (oil on canvas) was duly selected for the Government Art Collection (GAC) and it hangs at Downing Street, there to be admired by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. On the GAC website it is described thus: “landscape 21stC, industrial, urban, bin, street, terraced house, chimney”. If that isn’t the perfect counterpoint to a Lulu Lytle interior, then I don’t know what is. But if that blunt inventory sounds bleak, the Kinnear painting style is anything but. With deft brushstrokes and exuberant swathes of colour, he elevates grittiness to something rich and magisterial.’ (David Whetsone, Art Critic. Cultured North East, Jan 2022).