Eric Sykes on display

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

ERIC SYKES’ MEMORIAL

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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

Tony Benn Interview

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

TV Show

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

NEW DRAWING

Here’s new drawing or Ray, who kindly posed for me with his full body tattoo. It’s a drawing and will be in the Winter Show at Plus One gallery next week.

February 10th, 2013

Metro Gallery – Melbourne

6 Realist artists, including myself ,were invited to participate in an exhibition called  “British Realism Now ” by the Metro Gallery in Melbourne. It opens next week until 24th December 2012 and we’re delighted to be flying the flag for British Realism, a big underground movement in British art  but not seen in Australia before.

December 2nd, 2012

NEW ACQUISITION

The National Portrait Gallery have recently purchased my portrait of the late comedy writer and actor Eric Sykes for their  collection.  Eric was one of the nicest sitters that I have ever had , a lovely man and I’m so pleased that he has found a home  in the National Portrait Gallery. It’s a larger than life head study of Eric in Charcoal and pencil at  just over A1 size.

I’m currently working on a new commission for the NPG but I can’t reveal who it is yet.

More recently I’ve been working on a commission for Manchester Grammar School but I can’t unveil that yet until 2015.

December 2nd, 2012

New Portrait Commission

Here is a recent portrait commission that I did for a family in London, I’m always a little warey of putting too much information about people so I’ll just refer to the brother and sister as Bunny and Jack. It’s a large drawing , the framed size is approx 48″ x 40″. it’s in pencil and  charcoal. There is a beautiful Baroque fireplace in their house , huge , and I really wanted to use that as a very dramatic background, almost creating a pictuire with githic drama with the atmospheric lighting. I also wanted them to look relaxed.

December 2nd, 2012

BBC PUBLIC ART COLLECTION

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/andrew-tift

The BBc have developed a new website which is building up comprehensive lists of all art which is in the nation’s public collections. They’ve done a page on me if anybody wants to see any of my work in public places. There’s actually a lot more that I can add. If I can get my head around the site I’ll add the rest. My link is at the top

December 2nd, 2012

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCARLETT, YOU’RE ONE YEAR OLD

December 2nd, 2012

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