For Anton Munar making a painting is existential. The paintings that leave his studio depend on his disposition while painting. Desire is what drives his compulsion to paint, as he draws from life to guide his scenes into what appear like conjured dreams. In And the birds will continue at Brunette Coleman the presence of trees and solitary figures appear across most of the paintings. Anton’s fascination for painting trees stems from their anatomical similarities to the human body, and speaks to an understanding of their relationship to time and longevity.

Anton strives for an open reading of his paintings, the backdrops defined by glimpses of mountains and cathedrals in Mallorca, or a 17th century building in Copenhagen near his studio. Conceived in various amalgamations of distemper, ink, pastels and oils, their dry appearance alludes to the slow growth of lichen on bark. Spanning four years of enquiry, a history of layers peer from behind the foregrounds, his paintings never shy from revealing their past. To Anton, it’s imperative for this ancient ecology to inform and illuminate the figures on top.

His grandfather Antonio is acutely conscious of the trees, too: he spent a lifetime gathering and sculpting branches into walking sticks. Here, these canes have become companions to Anton’s paintings. Their amorphous appearance suggests bones or limbs, alluding to the ageing of both man and tree.

Anton notices that the bark engravings appear like hieroglyphs which, displayed on triangular supports, appear like coded symbols. Hidden metaphors and clues keep him entranced while working. Tranquility seamlessly descends into commotion across all of Anton’s painted worlds, coalescing as one under the thick weight of his imagination. He notes that, when paintings ‘look too absolute, I lose interest’ – each drama is part of an incomplete narrative, suspended at the point of a gripping cliffhanger.