Place
The apprehended quality of place is to landscape what universality is to the figure—both are found not in likeness but in recognition.
Landscape Series, 2019–2023
Across three major projects, Martin Kinnear has developed a landscape practice that situates place as both material and metaphor. Fracture locates figural concerns within the landscape, exploring liminality through local materials that act as cyphers for presence, time, and immanence. Regeneration, first conceived as a record of the North of England, was transformed by the pandemic into a meditation on resilience and community, culminating in a public gallery solo at The Bowes Museum. Beyond Here interrogates the classical landscape tradition from the vantage of Kinnear’s Dales studio, recasting it in contemporary dialogues of becoming and aligning it with the Modernist search for universality. Together, the series positions landscape not as backdrop, but as an active field of memory, identity, and renewal.
Landscape Series, 2022–2025
Fracture . 2025
Fracture situates Kinnear’s figural practice within landscape, exploring the liminality of place and people. Working with local materials and a philosophy of immanence, the series evokes time, presence, and the porous boundary between body and terrain.
Gallery of Selected Works
Regeneration . 2022
First comissioned as a personal record of northern landscapes, Regeneration became, under the pressures of COVID, a public gallery exhibition about resilience and community. Shown at The Bowes Museum, the series locates landscape as both witness and participant in collective endurance.
Beyond Here 2024
Beyond Here re-examines the classical landscape tradition from Kinnear’s Dales studio, situating it in contemporary dialogues of becoming. The series connects local terrain with Modernist traditions, interrogating how landscape can still articulate universal questions in painting.
Fracture Peinture à l’essence, Dales limestone, gloss and oil on canvas 2025 Exploring the liminality of place and people, Fracture uses local stone and layered surfaces to evoke presence, time, and the porous boundary between body and landscape.
Eroded Peinture à l’essence, Dales limestone, gloss and oil on canvas 2023 Exploring the liminality of place and people, Fracture uses local stone and layered surfaces to evoke presence, time, and the porous boundary between body and landscape.
Midsummer Peinture à l’essence, Dales limestone, gloss and oil on canvas 2023 Exploring the liminality of place and people, Fracture uses local stone and layered surfaces to evoke presence, time, and the porous boundary between body and landscape.
Martin Kinnear Congregation Oil on canvas 2022 Exhibited: Regeneration, The Bowes Museum, County Durham, 2022 Collection: University of Durham Art Collection In Congregation, place becomes inseparable from the people who inhabit it. The painting reflects the tragedy of the post-industrial North, where landscapes are also portraits of community, marked equally by resilience, memory, and loss.
Study for pandemonium Oil on canvas 2022 Exhibited: Regeneration, The Bowes Museum, County Durham, 2022
Beyond Here Oil and dry media on canvas 2018–2024 Landscape Painting Today, Messums, 2024; Re-examining the classical landscape tradition from his Dales studio, Beyond Here situates local terrain in contemporary dialogues of becoming and aligns it with the Modernist search for universality.
Burnsall Winter Oil on canvas 2018 Exhibited: Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris Salon, 2018 (Médaille d’Argent, Peinture) Burnsall Winter reflects Kinnear’s sustained engagement with the Yorkshire Dales, where tonal subtlety and layered surface evoke both atmosphere and geological presence. The work belongs to his exploration of landscape as an immanent field in which time, place, and perception converge. Exhibited at the Paris Salon in 2018, it was recognised with a Médaille d’Argent for painting, placing his North Yorkshire subject matter within an international dialogue of contemporary landscape practice.
Beyond Here Oil and dry media on canvas 2018–2024 Selected, Salon of 2018.