Sinclair Webster will join us at Oxmarket in our John Rank Gallery for his exhibition ‘Little White Lines’. Sinclair grew up in Khartoum, Nairobi and Flanders, where he first began painting. He has exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions in Nairobi, Ypres and Roeselare in Belgium, Cambridge and Edinburgh.
He studied at Worth, where his art master was Anthony Renouf, a former student of Stanley Spencer. Renouf painted alongside his pupils, and Sinclair learned through observing his practice. He later attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he studied Architecture and Fine Art.
During a gap year, Sinclair held his first solo exhibition, curated by Roberta Fonville at The New Stanley Art Gallery in Nairobi. The exhibition was well received by the art critic of The East African Standard. He subsequently exhibited with Footlights in Edinburgh, where he sold a painting to Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts. Encouraged by this success, and by his Belgian family, he went on to exhibit at Studio Callebert and Galerie Britannique in Flanders.
Following these early exhibitions, Sinclair married and set painting aside to support his family. He pursued a forty-year career in architecture, working as an ideas specialist within international practices focused on the design of healthcare facilities. In 2016, he returned to painting and drawing full time.
Sinclair’s first London exhibition was a winter group show at the Russell Gallery. He now participates in group exhibitions in Surrey and London. His work draws on places and subjects with which he is familiar, including Africa, Sussex and Yorkshire. People, animals and landscapes recur throughout his paintings, alongside themes inspired by his religious beliefs and his interest in European mythology.
His architectural background is evident in the compositional discipline of his work. Whether depicting landscapes, figures or animals, his paintings are characterised by a strong awareness of spatial organisation, balance and structure. At the heart of Sinclair’s practice is an exploration of how forms occupy and activate space, combined with the immediacy and intimacy of the dialogue between artist and image.
