Martin Kinnear, (born 1969, Burnley; lives and works in London, UK) is a disabled contemporary painter currently completing an MA in painting at the RCA London.

I am driven to paint monumental figures that appear as I work, and they might well be self-portraits, although I never intended them to be self-referential. By distilling forms into their essence, my paintings are sculptural in intent, pursuing a Modernist project of finding a ‘Universal’ figuration that transcends the confines of representational art.

I I obsessively explore contemporary figuration as a space where figural painting is sublated into and back from abstraction. Using expressive figure drawing as a point of departure, I develop ambiguous works in which background, foreground, and subject are in flux, creating paintings that both have and offer agency.

My process begins with expressive figure drawing, which serves as a foundation for creating intricate and ambiguous works. In these images, the boundaries between the background, foreground, and subjects become fluid, allowing the viewer to experience a dynamic interplay that evokes both movement and stillness, giving the completion of my images to each viewer.