Posts filed under 'Art'
It was a long time coming but here it is. We had a lovely unveiling at the National Portrait Gallery roof top restaurant on Thursday morning with magnificent panoramic views over London which seemed quite apt given the sitter. We started having meetings and sittings in 2011 and 2012, some while he was running for mayor again, and then Anne and I had Scarlett which slowed things down a little and I painted it from last January 2013.It took me 11 months to paint and is around three and a half foot square. In fact it took so long to paint that by the end I just became blind to it and couldn’t see it with fresh eyes so until the unveiling, when I got feedback from lots of people, I never really knew how I felt about it but I’m beginning to feel comfortable with it now. Here’s my quote from the press which sums it up for me and below I’ll add a link from The Guardian
” I wanted it to be a relaxed and informal depiction. One of the thinks Ken said to me during the sittings was that he always tried to appear calm during interviews and debates and never lost his cool so I wanted his pose to be calm, as if the viewer was in conversation with him and he was listening. I liked the idea of setting him in his garden rather than against architectural symbols of London which he is associated with because it was his little patch of London and I think he is very much perceived as a down to earth figure “.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/03/ken-livingstone-london-mayor-painting-national-portrait-gallery
July 6th, 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/14/mps-portraits-scandal-britain-hatred
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/14/mps-portraits-scandal-britain-hatred
I can’t believe how this story about the portrait collection at the House of Commons has escalated. It’s been on every TV news channel , radio, broadsheet and even tabloid. I think the most balanced and truthful piece was in yesterdays Guardian (which is attached above) by Jonathan Jones and it was very nice of him to focus on my portrait of Tony Benn which is in the collection.
I imagine a journalist was invited to Portcullis House for lunch and was shown the collection and had the germ of an idea to gently massage a nerve. In truth it’s a none story, £250,000 spent over almost 20 years is actually peanuts in the scheme of government spending. And from it they have some great depictions and a few exceptional portraits from some of the best portrait painters in the country. Again, in truth many of the artists did the portraits very much in good will because in the early days of the collection there was very little funding so back in 1998 I took the view that it was a great project to do and other work would come from it which indeed it did.
It’s a shame when issues like Syria have dropped off the news agenda in recent months this kind of inflammatory journalism can steal the headlines.
January 15th, 2014
Plus One gallery who I show with in London are currently holding an exhibition at the main museum in Andorra. We’ve all got a few pieces in the show ( the gallery artists) and I believe that it is moving on to Barcelona afterwards. Here’s a photo from the opening,unfortunately I didn’t go.
August 1st, 2013
Sky Arts are making a series about portraiture. It’s a competition based programme, I guess a bit like the X Factor but without the cruelty. They invited me to a screen test with the magnificent artist Tai Shan Schierenberg to be a judge and they rightly chose Tai who is not just a wonderful painter but a natural on TV, I remember a show he made for BBC2 on Titian which was excellent. I think Kathleen Soriano is the other judge, formerly of the National Portrait Gallery and now head of exhibitions at the RA. It would have been a giggle with those two but Sky, you made the right choice, my accent isn’t made for TV.
August 1st, 2013
Some time ago now I was invited to make a short film with Tony Benn about the portrait that I made of him 15 years ago for the House of Commons. We’re sat infront of the portrait with his son Hilary who was asking the questions.
Here is the youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXcoYZ_MzUw
I’m doing another portrait for the Palace of Westminster , this time for the House Of Lords, of Lord Carrington. I’ve had a few meetings and sitting with him at the Commons and at his home but I won’t be starting it until next year. I’ve been doing quite a few paintings which I can’t talk about at the moment until they have been unveiled which is why I haven’t posted many lately. I’m currently working on a portrait for the National Portrait Gallery and have been since January but again I can’t say who yet…watch this space.
August 1st, 2013
I was commissioned to do 2 portraits of Sir Adam Roberts, president of the British Academy on the Mall and also principal of Balliol College, Oxford. Both institutions had one image each. Here are the two drawings, roughly A2 in size in charcoal, carbon, graphite and ink. 
August 1st, 2013
My portrait of Eric Sykes was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery last week and is on show now for a while in their new re-hang to coincide with the Man ray exhibition. It is on the ground floor gallery space .
February 17th, 2013
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I was invited to Eric Sykes’ memorial at St. Martins-in-the-fields, just off trafalgar square last week. It was an upbeat memorial , Eddie Izzard made a speech and set the comedy tone and Robert Lindsay , Peter Alliss , Tim Davie and Bill Kenwright also spoke. It was full to the rafters with family and friends and lots’ of actors and comedians. The service closed with the RAF band playing the theme tune to his 70’s sit com “Sykes” .
February 10th, 2013
I was invited to the House of Commons a while ago to do an interview with Tony Benn which took place last week. It has been 15 years now since I completed the portrait of him and they wanted to do an interview with us discussing the portrait for documentation. It was lovely to see Tony again, the last time I saw him was on one of his tours about 10 years ago in Telford but we’ve kept in touch over the years with Christmas cards and telephone conversations. His son Hilary Benn was asking the questions. It’s amazing how much momentum portraits of people in the public eye gather over the years, I’d still say that this portrait is one of the pictures that I’m most asked about, they tend to take on a life of their own afterwards. I hadn’t seen the picture for a while and it’s strange how you forget the scale of some of these paintings, it was much bigger than I had remembered, even within the scale of Portcullis House. This was the first of these interviews so I guess they’ll see how it goes but I’ll put a link to it once it’s published.
February 10th, 2013
Just before I went to Eric Sykes’ memorial I had a screen test for an art TV show on Sky which was an interesting experience. It’s all in the balance at the moment and you know “us actors” don’t like to jinx anything, I’ve probably said too much already.
February 10th, 2013
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