Portrait of a blog

Smithsonian Institution purchase 2 of my paintings

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC have puchased 2 of my paintings for their permanent collection. It is reputed to be the biggest museum in the world and this is my first acquisition into a major American collection so I’m delighted to have some of my work represented there.

The 2 paintings are both portraits of very eminent American figures; Cormac McCarthy and Murray Gellman.

I first met them in 2004 when my gallery invited me over to Santa Fe, New Mexico to do a portrait based project exploring “The people of New Mexico” where I drove around the state looking for interesting faces. Cormac and Murray were based at a “think tank/ research unit ” situated in the middle of the New Mexican desert where they develop their own projects and hold philosophical discussions around tables.

I would like to thank The Andreeva Gallery in Santa Fe and especially Pam for her relentless enthusiasm and professionalism in placing the works into the Smithsonian’s collection over the past few months and also special  thanks to Francisco for his generosity  and kind gesture.
Cormac McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the greatist living American writers. In 1992 he wrote “All the Pretty Horses” which was later made into a film starring Matt Damon. In 2005 he wrote “No Country for Old Men” which more recently was made into a film directed by the Coen brothers starring Tommy Lee Jones and won 4 Academy Awards at this years Oscars including “Best Film”. In 2007 he won The Pulitzer Prize for literature. He is notoriously reclusive and very rarely gives interviews so I was incredibly lucky to get him to sit for me in Santa Fe, I think something just clicked between us and we seemed to get on.

Murray Gell-Mann is a world renowned Physicist who has made discoveries and developments in “Quantum Physics” and in 1969 he won the Nobel Prize for physics. I loved his “eccentric scientist” look and the fact that he wore a Native American Indian bootlace tie.

May 5th, 2008

The Guardian / Sunday Observer – April 27th 2008 (Parliamentary Collection)

Phil Hale’s recent portrait of Tony Blair prompted the following article on the Parliamentary Collection in The House of Commons.  I’ve admired Phil’s work for many years now since he first exhibited in The BP Portrait Awards (around 2001 if my memory serves me), and I think he was an excellent choice to paint Blair, looks really good too from the photographs I’ve seen  but I haven’t seen it in the flesh yet.

Anyway, here is an extract from the article which a friend pointed out to me last week refering to my portrait of Tony Benn.

Peter Conrad – Sunday 27th April 2008 -The Observer/(Sunday Guardian)

“The best parliamentary portraits have a candour that does credit to the artist and – perhaps even more – to the subject. Tony Benn chose to present himself to Andrew Tift as a private man in a messy, madly eccentric domestic setting with a transistor radio propped on a cardboard carton that does duty as a side table and a tacky plaster statuette of Marx on the mantelpiece. His shoelaces don’t match, and a button on his floppy cardigan is chipped. Only tyrants bother about posing as heroes; democracy, to its credit, is inured to human imperfection”.

May 5th, 2008