Born in Sydney, the work of Australian artist James McGrath takes as its starting point Baroque painting and architectural traditions.The artist deftly navigates an accomplished old master technique with contemporary materials and innovative spatial techniques, simultaneously deconstructing the notion of the Baroque original and modernising it.The artist works in painting, prints, videos and plexiglas panels to create layered imagery and voluptuous density drawn directly from the art, design and architecture of seventeenth century Europe. The artist employs sophisticated 3D cloth simulation software to visually amalgamate different motifs together, whether they be Catholic or mythical, still lifes, exquisite draperies or figures. The resulting image is often amplified, fragmented and distorted. The artist’s work deconstructs the notion of realism in Baroque and seventeenth century art and presents a heightened, surrealistic vision of this potent visual world. In attempting to bridge these historical elements and the contemporary, he has produced some of the most sensuous and luscious works in the present art scene.

McGrath studied the techniques and principles of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century masters at the studio school of Patrick Betaudier in Paris. Before graduating as an architect he worked as a  studio assistant with Australia’s greatest expressionist painter, Arthur Boyd. While a lecturer at New South Wales University he was awarded several prizes for architecture and art, including the Australian Postgraduate Award and a residency in Paris. Over the last ten years he has exhibited in New York, London, Sydney and Paris. He has also produced highly original digital installations and ideos commissioned by several Australian museums and subsequently presented at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, in 2000.