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
Anne and myself went away for a break to Cornwall a few weeks ago and I took my sketchbook with me with no real intentions to do anything. I’ve been scrutinising and looking at peoples faces almost daily for more than 15 years now and I got to thinking that over that period of time there must be some kind of visual record in my head that I can tap. So, just as an experiment I thought I’d try and see what kind of a head I could draw straight out of my head with nothing in front of me and this image grew over a period of hours almost entirely spontaneously I guess, though I was making narrative judgements along the way to give the head a context.
It looks a bit too much like caricature for me in retrospect which is not an avenue I really want to explore in any depth but it was a great little exercise for me to do, just to see what materialised. I put the typography on when I got back home using my printer. The title refers to a song that my wife introduced me to by Cat Stevens – ( currently Mr Yusuf Islam) and I just liked the idea of him being a Ramones fan.
April 20th, 2008
I made this drawing very recently for a charity art auction in aid of Leukemia research at the Queen Elizabeths Hospital in Birmingham. It is a drawing of a Voodoo Doll that I brought in New Orleans who now sits on my shelf in the studio. I haven’t been cooking up a voodoo hex on anybody, it’s just a lovely piece of magical iconography which to me is extremely aesthetically pleasing.
The main auction is on 20th May at St Paul’s gallery in Birmingham and there will be a few days prior to this where you can take a look at the full body of work which will be auctioned.
Dig deep and bid hard.
For more information about the event please take a look at the following website.
http://www.claa2008.com/
April 20th, 2008
Here is what I am working on at the moment. It is a portrait of a lady called Doreen. Luckily for me Doreen has a very interesting face, piercing blue eyes orange / red preraphaelite hair. I immediately wanted to use the cloour of Doreen’s hair in the painting and I always love the way that complementary red and green work together so I asked her to wear a green jumper which also contrasts beautifully with the red sofa too ( which I will be working on next). I think the portrait was more the conception of her husband than Doreen and I’m sure that she won’t mind me saying that she was very uneasy/uncomfortable about sitting for the commission initially but as the hours went by I think she became more relaxed with the whole thing and we began to get some nice images. In contrast, her husband took to being photographed extremely well when I took a few pictres of him later on.
The family had two lovely dogs and I really wanted to include them within the painting because they were so much a part of the family , at your side all the time. While I fear with dread the idea of “Pet Portraiture” I think putting pets within paintings where they are not the main subject, just a little section of a painting works extremely well and in some ways just puts another heartbeat into the painting rather than an inanimate object. I also really enjoyed painting the dogs too, other than drawing my own dog I have never really painted a dog before and their hair, paws and eyes were the perfect subject matter for my detailed style. I’m just about to start the sofa which has incredible detail in the pattern which I’m quite looking forward to.
More updates soon.
(click on the images to enlarge)
April 20th, 2008
It seems a strange thing to give away but if anybody would like one of my palette skins which build up on my palette’s while I am painting then you are welcome. I was peeling some off my palettes and throwing them away the other day and somebody asked if they could have one –” Stick it in a frame and it’s as good as a Howard Hodgkin ” They are acrylic so they hold the perfect shape of my palette. While I paint I also have a sheet of A4 paper taped to the canvas onto which I drag out the excess paint before I apply it to the canvas. I don’t know but if anybody would like one of these too you are welcome, they’ll only end up in the bin.
I’ve got about 4 “Skins” at the moment and it’s strictly first come first served so drop me a line ( marked “palette skins”) if you want one. (UK only I’m afraid)
March 15th, 2008
I made these drawings while I was working on the large portrait painting of Ronald last year. They weren’t really preliminary drawings, more getting to know his face. It was a wonderful commission to work on and I was very pleased with the images from the original sitting and wanted to develop them a little further. While the painting is lit with natural light coming streaming in from the large window I used very strong, directional light for this series which created very dramatic chiaroscuro style shadows which I love.
The triptych drawing is currently on display in The Wales Portrait Award which is touring around Wales for the next 2 years. It is yet another carbon copy of the BP Portrait Award promoting figurative painting and there are some strong pieces in it including former BP Award winner Peter Edwards with his portrait of Ryan Giggs.
(click on the image to enlarge)
March 6th, 2008
This is a recent painting of a biker that I met called Bandana. I’m always interested in people who live their own alternative lifestyle, on the fringes of society, outside of the mainstream. They are almost always interesting both visually and in conversation and Bandana was no exception.
He is the member of The Kavern motorcycle club which is based in a pub in Walsall, just down the road from me. They are not actually Hells Angels but are affiliated to them. I’ve walked and driven past many times and they are usually outside drinking, talking and smoking and I’ve often thought that they would make great sitters so the one night I went over and got chatting to some of the club members and some of them agreed to sit for me. ( click on the image to enlarge)
Due to commitments with portrait commissions this is probably the only new painting which will be available for sale that I will do for the next 12-18 months. For further enquires please contact David Powell at [email protected] or telephone 0161 282 0318 / 07968 047224
Bandanna will be on display at The Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition at The Mall Gallery from 24th April -11th May.
February 11th, 2008
Artists Process – National Portrait Gallery, 4th Dec 2007 -1st June 2008 (rooms 37 + 37a)
is an exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery showing how artists put a painting together, including roughs, photographs, preliminary drawings and paintings, diaries, design notes and ideas, final compositions etc… They are showing my painting of Neil and Glenys Kinnock together with all of the support work and material.
link http://www.npg.org.uk/live/woartistprocess.asp
2. Labour Intensive – The New Art Gallery, Walsall – (12th Jan – 11th May 2008)
Group exhibition featuring work inspired by Black Country industry. There are a few of my very early paintings from my MA project back in 1991 when I did a big project based around the de-industrialisation of the West Midlands Steel Industry and its affects on the community. I visited may of the old hot press rolling mills, foundries and chain makers and focused on the people. You will see a distinct change in style from those days to the work that I do now but the human figure still predominates.
3. Paintings and drawings – Andreeva gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. (until 1st March 2008)
A selection of paintings and drawings will be on display until 1st March which are predominantly portraiture based.
4. The Wales Portrait Award 2008 – (2 year touring exhibition of Wales).
Triptych portrait of the late Ronald James, also the subject of a recent , larger painting.
5. Bandanna will be on display at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition at The Mall Gallery from 24th April – 11th May 2008.
January 17th, 2008
I finally completed the portrait of Ronald shortly before Christmas Eve. It was a wonderful painting to do, just the kind of subject matter that I like but also because Ronald and his son were so nice too. Unfortunately though Ronald never got to see the final painting because he died 3 weeks after our initial sitting so the the whole commission is tinged with sadness.
Often in my portraits I am interested in peoples objects and posessions within their spaces and the way that they reflect and reinforce the sitters identity, (see Tony Benn and The Kinnock’s) but here it is a simpler , more direct composition, less cluttered and arranged and I think it has a more natural feel to it and it is really “about the man”. Perhaps the more we just reflect on the figure, without any of the dressings the closer we get to the actual depiction/reflection of the “the man”. Kind of like the the purity of an old blues recording by Skip James or the final albums of Johnny Cash where it’s just stripped down to the man and a guitar and the purity and fragility just rings through the under-production.
If you want to take a closer look just click on the image and it’ll come up a bit bigger.
January 2nd, 2008
If you are stuck for a last minute Christmas present mrmbership to The Art Fund is a pretty good one. You get 50% off entry to all major exhibitions and free entry to 200 fee charging museums and galleries, aswell as supporting The Art fund who have saved over 860,000 works of art for the nation. Sounds pretty good to me. They have just released a pack of cards with some of the works on to promote their membership which incongruously features my triptych of Kitty in unbelievably good company, so thanks for that. For more info take a look at www.artfund.org
December 18th, 2007
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