Royal Drawing School graduate Rowley Haynes has put together a sumptuous set of paintings and drawings for his debut show in Asia.
The exhibition While Others Only Slept (8–26 August 2023) at LKIF Gallery in Seoul captures those private, unselfconscious moments. The artist appears to go unobserved as he watches people preoccupied—sleeping, cooking, reading, drawing—in private spaces.
Haynes' rendering of light—dappled, soft, and glowing—is particularly marvellous. Light shines in through windows like a blessing.
Yet it's his ability to foreground the physicality of his chosen materials that makes his practice so admirable.
The pencil on paper work, Sleep,Sleep,Sleep (2023), for example, harnesses the thin line and neat shading of coloured pencils to create a brilliantly textured, animated work of a subject at rest. Similarly, Haynes' hazy application of oil paint serves to heighten the warm, soft glow of light that floods into his frames.
