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Expat builds artistic career in Hangzhou
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GAVIN Munro looked out the window of his 16th-floor apartment. Night had just fallen, and twilight illuminated the broad Qiantang River and faraway hills. The buildings over the river twinkled. Inspired by the scene and a few sips of wine, Munro grabbed his brush and started painting.
With orange and yellow swirls and squares representing the haloed stars and buildings, the oil painting is “expressive, detailed, and ultra-realistic,” said its Hangzhou-based creator.
Munro hails from Manchester in the UK. Before moving to Hangzhou nearly a decade ago, he was an event organizer and, in his own words, “a much richer guy.” But after getting bored with making money, he decided to travel the world.
After a year in Thailand and several years in other Asian countries, he came to Hangzhou in 2007 to visit his older brother, who was working in the city.
Though the language barrier, huge population and culture shock scared Munro at first, he felt in his heart that “this is a place where I could settle.”
It was also after coming to Hangzhou that Munro decided to pursue a career as an artist.
To support himself, he worked as an English teacher at first. Later, he became a marketing manager for food delivery company Sherpas, as well as agent booking stand-up comedians for shows in Shanghai and Hangzhou. He also plays guitar and sings at a local pub.
“I actually feel much happier now than the time when I was rich,” he says confidently. “I’d rather be poor than rich and restricted.”
“Because when you have money, you need to worry about how to keep it,” he adds. “When you don’t have it, you just don’t care.”
In January, he decided to paint full-time.
Largely self-taught, the British artist says he’s been painting since his childhood.
“I learn by mistakes, not from teachers,” he says.
Most of his paintings are portraits and landscapes. He loves painting his friends, as well as celebrities, including Jimi Hendrix, Donald Trump, David Bowie and Elvis Presley.
To paint these iconic persons, Munro watches videos and studies photos of them before grabbing his brushes. He also plays his subject’s music, or listens to their speeches while painting as a way to delve into their personalities.
When his models are people he knows, deep conversations before painting are necessary. “The eyes are the most important part. Usually I spent two-thirds of my time drawing them,” says the artist.
His portraits are created with unique oil-painting textures. They look detailed and life-like, yet are not meant to be photo-realistic. In a node to portraitist Chuck Close, he also uses squares, circles and large color blocks to depict the human face.
Munro loves saturated, bold colors and strong contrasts. Many of his wall-size paintings are deliberately meant to shock and arrest the viewer.
“I do not make art for decoration, I want to have people think different,” he explains, pointing to Van Gogh, Lucian Freud, Jack Vettriano and English graffiti artist Banksy as being among his influences.
To see Munro’s work, please go to gavmunro.co.uk. You can also find him playing the guitar every Saturday evening at Fanny’s Irish Pub on 488 Dongxin Avenue, Binjiang District.
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