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Artist Profile

Photo of Vincenco Donlini Vince Donlin, a.k.a. Vincenzo Donlini, was born of Irish parents into humble surroundings in Stepney, East London. Vincenzo who despite setbacks like recently diagnosed dyslexia and poor schooling has produced a large body of remarkable paintings unique in late twentieth and early twenty-first century art. Following his own visions rather than the dictates of fashion.

He was fortunate enough to be taught at secondary school by Donald Pass an artist who had a profound effect on him and his decision to paint and remain a painter.

His art training which included little formal tuition included one year on a foundation course where he was told by one tutor that his paintings were “so bad you are bound to get somewhere” and that “painting is dead.” This often quoted mantra inspired a quiet and persistent desire to continue and a belief that not only was painting very much alive but that it had been reborn.

Believing that the only course open to him was one of painting he supported himself by whatever means necessary including working as a lavatory attendant, dockyard worker, postman, gravedigger, film extra, builder’s labourer and various periods on the dole.

Donlini has never abandoned the craft of painting, except for during a difficult period in the late seventies, when, following a visionary experience whilst working in a graveyard, he gave away a large amount of his work believing it to be ‘the will of God‘. Following this period , he became front man and shamanic ranter with ‘C.C.C.P.’ and ‘Persephone and the seven pillars of wisdom’, groups formed in the early eighties.

After this period of experimentation with other mediums he returned exclusively to painting, discovering “hieroglyphic pointillism” a method midway between painting and writing.

In 1997 Donlini decided to restrict himself to painting scenes from the ‘life of Christ’ in an effort to distance himself from the autobiographical nature of much modernism which he believes is no more and that what art there is, is contemporary at least and timeless at best.

Vincenzo also undertakes portrait commissions, beginning at £500 (measuring 23×30cms) to £5000 (measuring 80×100cms).

Commissions have included:

  • Keith Allen (Actor) and his daughter the singer Lilly Allen and her brother
  • Martin Donlin (Architectural Glass Designer) the artist’s brother
  • Laura Windle (Singer, Animator & Painter)
  • Bernard and Kirsten Richter (Art collectors)
  • Tony Frisby and Dawn Austin-Lock (Poets)
  • Joy Fitzsimmons (Childens Author )and husband Andy Hair
  • Helga Windle (Painter)

Giclee prints of selected work for £75.00 (A3 size/signed)

Also available by the artist are commissions and copies of unavailable work and of Greek and Russian Icon paintings.

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From Donlin to Donlini

Vincenzo Donlini 1970-1980 Vincenzo Donlini 1970-1985 Vincenzo Donlini 1980-1990 Vincenzo Donlini 1990-2000 Vincenco Donlini 2000-2006

From Donlin to Donlini, the transformation was almost effortless and imperceptible even to the artist himself. It began in a light hearted way, at the artist’s wedding when he was known only as Vince when guests called him Vincenzo Donlini presumably due to his resemblance at the time to a long haired mafia boss.

This is one of a number of names used all evolving from his own name Vincent Patrick Francis David Donlin. Vincent P Donlin and A.M. (anonymous master) a title he assumed while still in his teens and when he was much enamoured of medieval art and in particular Jan van Eyck. At the same time he was also taken with the modern movement and the flamboyant surrealist painter Salvador Dali; this contrast between the modest and obscure medieval craftsman and the egotistical artist has long raged in his soul.

After a period in his early twenties when he signed his work Vincent P Donlin, it was then during the nineteen eighties and nineties he became the more egalitarian, Vince Donlin, as his work was dealing with more philosophical subjects and addressing the problems of inequality and politics.

Toward the mid nineties the anonymous master within him was already surfacing again where he would sign his name with a stencil only. This was brought to a conclusion during the late nineties and early twenty first century, when with his first overtly religious works he didn’t sign the paintings at all.

However the ego forever craving recognition began to surface again in about 2003-4 when he began signing himself Vincenzo Donlini.

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