Mendes and His Mentors

Hugh Mendes presents recent paintings and works on paper.

 “I have been making paintings of other artists for some years now, mostly using self-portraits, or, more recently, portraits by other artists, as source material. 

I present them in the format for which I am best known; namely, as newspaper obituaries, tributes to these artists, my mentors. The paintings themselves also reference various techniques and styles of painting that I feel have been influential to my own practice. Some of these artists taught me directly, such as Euan Uglow, while others are more distant influences. 

‘The Tub’ is a particularly appropriate and poignant place to exhibit paintings of my mentors- an Artist Run Project Space, it was set up and is run by some of my ex students who, in a sense, I mentored. The show represents a continuing lineage of mentorship.”
 

 "Basically what is offered here is a series of cultural icons. It is not going too far to say that they are the equivalents of the sacred images one might find in a church."

 --Edward Lucie-Smith, 2018 

"Hugh Mendes is a great craftsman and a teacher... he subtly alludes to and understands the different styles and techniques, how each artist used colour, while making the work recognisably his own." 

–Sue Hubbard, 2020