Justin Zennil Bishop - A Healthy Foundation

Zennil was born in England and now lives in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Zennil is a student artist currently studying the Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts at the Western Sydney Institute, TAFE.

His major areas of study include painting, drawing and printmaking. He is a competent animal portrait artist and receives commissions to paint clients pets in oil which he executes with an incredible realistic likeness to the photographs he works from.

Zennil has been influenced by Caravaggio for his dramatic photographically cropped scenes and the intensity of the people accentuated by the implementation of the Chiaroscuro technique.

Currently, Zennil’s multimedia interests involve an in depth consideration into the role that plastic bags have on the environment. His paintings and drawings investigate the impact plastic bags have on the ecosystem, the role they play in our consumer driven society and how as consumers we display a mindless conformity to this material.

My subject and styles are varied and will possibly remain so as long as there are new techniques to try and the techniques that I have already learned are reviewed and refined. The mediums I favour at the moment are oil paints and drawing pastels. The constant that exists between my artworks is probably emotion and a juxtaposition of a particular emotion contradicted by a particular situation or subject. This discord usually has a dark humour underlying the surface.

I enjoy the Baroque artists and their execution of the chiaroscuro style especially that of Caravaggio, also, the stark contrast of Film Noir; with its limited and selective subject matter highlighted against a setting of dark scenes that I feel intensifies the drama because your imagination is encouraged to be active by the unknown.

The painting I’ve created for the “Sharing the seeds” project titled “A Healthy Foundation” is of a wall made up of a collection of natural produce. The wall of fruit and vegetables represent the cornerstone of community with all its diversity. The shapes , sizes and colours of the produce are symbolic of the people; their culture, race and age. The largest of the fruit and vegetables can be regarded as the elders of the community elevating and supporting their descendants through family and neighbourly cohesion.