COMP CLOSED: Book Giveaway: Kees Bruin: Visions of the Real

Popular and accessible fine art by Kees Bruin, with over 270 full-colour reproductions and images

Two years after graduating, Kees Bruin was exhibiting alongside Leo Bensemann, Don Binney, Doris Lusk, Trevor Moffitt, Peter Siddell, Olivia Spencer-Bower, Grahame Sydney, Robin White, and Brent Wong.

For more than five decades of dedicated painterly practice and exhibition, Kees Bruin has established a unique visionary identity within the framework of New Zealand realism that is enthusiastically commissioned and collected internationally.

His three overlapping categories: photo-realism, super-realism and what he terms “visionary-realism,” sprung from a personal search for all things truth hence his clever use of symbol, have gifted us exquisite panoramic landscapes, expressions of cultural pursuits such as surfing and skateboarding often imbued with metaphor, single and group portraits, reinterpretations of masters, especially the Dutch Golden Age, elaborated ‘still-lifes’ and works that explore elements of western Judaeo-Christian histories combined with contemporaneous fashions, settings and views to and from the earth. This personal genre launches us as art viewers into emotional odysseys of timeless human concern: Spirituality, the universe, beauty, truth, life and death, sex, betrayal, vanity and loss, as well as using paint to express beauty for its own sake.

With degrees in art history and classics, John Stringer brings a depth to appreciating both contemporary and ancient art as an expression of human culture. Having worked in both the church and the art sector, he is qualified to unpack Kees Bruin’s unique painting career.

Stringer is a published author and historian with interests in archaeology, faith and art. He lives in Christchurch with his wife, Laurie. They have five children, four grandchildren, and two British bulldogs. John continues to write and research on history, art history and faith and is a practising artist himself.

Kees Bruin

‘Kees Bruin is a photo-realist artist whose paintings trade in the accuracies and ambiguities of the genre, contesting its certainties with an invitation to a more generous reality. Layered in symbolism, mythology, spirituality and the humanities, his paintings are an extraordinary perspective on the world that we all briefly occupy and call our home.’ Warren Feeney

Terms and conditions

1. You must be a GrownUps member and receive our newsletter to be eligible to win.
2. Competition closes on the 18th January 2022, winners will be notified via email by Thursday 20th Jan 2021.
3. As a competition winner, you must confirm you have received our email notifying you of the win within three days. If we have not heard from you in three days the prize will be redrawn, and your prize will be forfeit.
4. Winners are drawn at random by the GrownUps administration team.
5. GrownUps employees and family are not eligible to enter.
6. By entering the giveaway, you approve for GrownUps to use your name on social media as winner of the competition.
7. One entry per person.
8. You must reside in New Zealand – the prize will only be posted within New Zealand.
9. You must be over 50 years of age to enter, check your details are correct in your membership dashboard.