PEOPLE:
I've been told that I capture the essence of a person's soul in my portraits, a very nice compliment that I try to live up to.
"After the Fall" here shows 4 out of a commissioned series of 9. The fall in this case was a nasty one that could have been fatal but was not. It brought mortality too close to this man, however, as can be seen in this sequence. "After the Fall #2 was chosen to be part of the annual competitive show in Cambridge Studio Gallery in Melbourne.
"Paul, Kintsugi Man" was done on his request, not many months before Paul died. Kintsugi is a Japanese art form in which valued but broken ceramics are repaired with gold - and become yet more valuable. Paul had many scars, some from rough bike riding on Australian outback terrain, some from years of fighting a tough cancer. He saw kintsugi as a metaphor for himself, and asked me to paint him with his scars in gold. This painting was a semi-finalist (one of 132 out of over 1000 entries) in the Australian Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, in 2018.
"Sid's Mother" was painted solely on the basis of the poem, and - happily - the poet loved it. Ted's Friend and Sunshine are older works, both from models, both watercolour.
