The National Portrait Gallery have recently released a new book featuring 50 works from their contemporary collection. It’s an interesting book with lots of lavish illustrations and features David Hockney’s “Self Portrait with Charlie” which the gallery acquired a few years ago. There’s a section on “artist’s processes” which includes some more recent commissions by the gallery and also my portrait of The Kinnocks and some interesting interviews with Marc Quinn, Michael Craig-Martin and Julian Opie.
ISBN: 978 185514 4040
£6.99
June 20th, 2009
Anne and me were invited to the BP Awards and ceremony on Tuesday night. It certainly brought back memories of shaking knees and jelly joints 3 years earlier. My artist friend Mike Gaskell was shortlisted to the last 3 for his absolutely beautiful and sensitive portrait of his son Tom. Unfortunately he came second …for the second time !! and I really had him down as this years winner. The author Sebastian Faulks was this years guest presenter and I believe he is currently writing a new Bond book.
It was a lovely dinner though, nice champers to start with and a very tasty lamb dinner complete with desert wine which is always a good thing.
June 20th, 2009
On Monday 15th – Wednesday 17th June I was invited to give a series of talks about my work in the National Portrait Gallery lecture theatre. I was slightly worried that my monotone West Midlands drawl would send everybody into a coma but they seemed to go fine – lots of questions at the end anyway which is usually a good sign.
I managed to talk for an hour each time but I guess when you’ve been working as a painter for about 16 years there’s plenty to talk about. Infact the hardest part was editing out rather than trying to fill the time. It was basically a talk about my wotk from my MA in 1992 to present day in sequence. I look mighty small on that stage up there.
June 20th, 2009
Parliaments Education Service has been working with a group of 20 young students from KingsdaleFoundation School, West Dulwich. They were invited to create a work of art inspired by portraits in the Parliamentary art collection and the repeat patterns of the Pugin fabric of Westminster. They spent 8 weeks researching and making their beautiful final piece of work which was partly inspired by my portrait of Tony Benn which they selected.
We had a lovely lunch time reception in Portcullis House and met all of the students, teachers and workshop leaders and I saw the fruits of their labour.
June 20th, 2009
Sorry I’ve not posted anything for a few weeks, I’ve been extremely busy working on new work and commissions but I’ll have some new pictures to post toward the end of the week.
Watch this space.
June 13th, 2009
Here are 2 new drawings which I have made. The first is called “Drifting” and the other if from my trip to Japan and is called ” Shinjuku Sushi Bar”.
I have continued working in line and tone as with the previous drawing, Harajuku Station. I like the way the line drawing in the background pushes out the figures/portrait and gives them a context which feels as real as a photograph in the sense that we believe in it but it is actually very crude. I’m really quite excited by this development because I like the juxtaposition of pure realism and crude line work as one coherant image so I’ll be developing it further.
April 23rd, 2009
Every Sunday morning in Yoyogi Park in Harajuku hundreds of punks, greasers, costume playgangs and generally trendy young things congregate like peacocks and strut around in all their finery.
This is a drawing that I made recently of a guy that I met at Harajuku station. I wanted a really fresh and lively feel to the background because it was a travel project. I wanted it feel more spontaneous and immediate and juxtapose that to the very tight portrait drawing of the figure which gives the portrait a very fluid context. I was looking at it the other night and the spontaneous lines of the background suggested more memories to me of the actual experience than I got from looking at a photograph of Harajuku which was quite strange and certainly unexpected. I think perhaps your brain is wired differently to interpret a drawing and it fills in all of the gaps where as with a photograph it’s all presented to you in a totally objective manner.
click on the image to enlarge
March 19th, 2009
This is my latest drawing of Ken Billingham in his house in Cradley Heath,West Midlands. It is on A1 size paper and the drawing is approximately 31″ x 23″ ( charcoal, graphite and carbon on paper ).
I met Ken about 18 years ago, man alive! I can’t believe that, in 1991 while I was doing my MA project at Birmingham Art College. I was looking at the deindustrialisation of the west midlands steel industry and the effects it had on the Black Country’s communities.
I met Ken at the foundry where he worked in Cradley Heath, Glynwed Foundry I remember it was called, long since demolished. Ken used to tap the furnaces and catch the moulten steel in metal shanks. I never felt that I really captured him properly back in 1991 so I asked him if he would mind sitting for me agian, which he did just before Christmas.
He is a deeply religious man and has had a series of profound religious experiences so I wanted to bring this out in the drawing of him where I have used the ceramic crucifix which is on his wall in the front room. I wanted to make a drawing which was connected to Rennaisance art and religious imagery, especially with the atmospheric lighting used by Caravaggio so I wanted to create quite strong shadows and contrasts. Ken gesticulates with his hands while he is talking and this is something else I wanted to work on, almost in thoughtful conversation. He’s got such fantastic, big hands which were formed in the foundries of the Black Country and were an integural part of the portrait. The title comes from the candle holders on the ceramic crucifix which I felt was very the way Ken has lived his life.
If you click on the image it should enlarge.
Look at my next entry for the development of the drawing
March 5th, 2009
I made and entry on my blog in January saying that I had done 2 portraits on postcards after the NPG approached artists to do so for their fundraising gala on 3rd March which I think they were selling for £200 . I can now reveal which 2 were mine.
They are about 8″ and the first is a B/W painting of a woman I met in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo and the second is a drawing of a dear friend of mine, Ken Billingham who also features in the next entry.
(If you click on the image they should enlarge)
March 5th, 2009
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