In Smoked & Roasted, Fe29 presents cooking new works from Evan Woodruffe, whose exuberance and skill with paint are joyful to behold. Conceived over several weeks in New York’s East Village at the start of the year, this new suite of paintings shimmers with light; agile brush marks dance over 2D and 3D surfaces. Their layers are porous; they are sprayed, drawn, painted, and collaged in a concert of saturated, pastel, translucent, and opaque hues. Colours are carefully positioned, or applied with wilful abandon, their vocabulary shifting from excited shouts to hushed quiet, creating dynamic symphonies of colour, movement, emotion and intellect.

These are paintings of food, music, laughter, cocktails, and travel. They are social, they are movement, they entice and delight. Smoked & Roasted is a cocktail served at the bar across the street from where Evan was staying, and its balance of spice, sweet, citrus and salt has been brought back as a suite of luscious coloured paintings.

Evan Woodruffe is based in Tamaki Makaurau Auckland and exhibits throughout the Asia-Pacific. Although music was his first love, he tried his hand at painting in the late 1990’s and was hooked – he began a professional practice in 2003. Completing an MFA (1st Class) at Elam University of Auckland in 2013, he went on to earn a post-graduate degree in Art and Design from AUT in 2014.

While painting remains the core of Woodruffe’s practice, his works have been printed onto fabrics, furniture, architecture, and automobiles (BMW, Sydney and Jaguar, Singapore). Through collaboration with designers and performers, he has extended his painting practice off the wall and into our 3D world.