A small (7.5cm x 9cm), mixed media painting on paper, developed from a Sony Reader drawing (now posted on the other blog "The doodle bug" - to see this blog, click on the image of "Les wearing his check jacket" in the left hand column).
July 2010.
My paintings are paintings that happen to be of people, mostly women. When I find a subject it is often because something about the image/sitter prompts me to think "this would make a good painting" rather than "I'd like to make a/do their portrait." Sometimes the resulting work shows a good likeness but not always simply because I am more concerned with the marks and colours and the relationships between them that make up a painting. So why so much focus on the female face when I could explore these "painting" issues through landscapes or still lives or non figurative work ? Because the face fascinates, because women tend to do more with their hair ("big" hair makes great shapes) and make-up and I like the strong graphic marks that mascara allows.
The National Portrait Gallery in London is currently showing a small exhibition of paintings by the American artist Alex Katz. The exhibition catalogue includes a transcript of a conversation where Katz talks to Sarah Howgate about portrait painting :
Sarah Howgate: "You've said that your concern is not with psychology but with the painted surface. Many artists attempt to get under the skin of their subject, but this is not what you're trying to do."
Alex Katz: "I've always thought that appearance is one of the most mysterious things. What is appearance today? There are no absolutes. It's a matter of sensation. Appearance, or reality, is a variable and it changes every twenty or thirty years."
(Above) The Green Cap (oil on board) by Alex Katz
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