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Your pieces often seem to capture the \u2018essence\u2019 of your sitters, as opposed to a true representation of how they look. As a portrait artist, how do you develop a relationship with your subjects?<\/b><\/p>\n
If it\u2019s a famous person I\u2019ll do lots of drawings from photos in an attempt to skewer the features that make them them. If it\u2019s an \u2018ordinary\u2019 person I\u2019ll draw them from life, usually after a cup of tea and a chat to find out a bit about them and feel relaxed together.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve never seen a boring face<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Do you have any instinct now for the kind of face that will make for a good portrait, or do you find you still have to find out by beginning a work?<\/b><\/p>\n I\u2019ve never seen a boring face<\/span>. Big features are obviously fun to do. Pretty young people are the most difficult because there\u2019s less fun stuff to hit on. One thing I don\u2019t like doing is heavy makeup, but even then I usually think that if the person wants to look a weird colour, or flat, or bland, then I\u2019ll just exaggerate that a little bit. I drew a very orange looking girl the other day, I asked her if she\u2019d been on a sun bed and she said no, it was a certain shade of foundation. It was quite unpleasant to look at but then I thought, if she wants to look orange then I\u2019ll draw her orange. <\/span><\/p>\n Though you work almost exclusively in portraits your practice spans mediums, particularly sculpture and drawing. I\u2019m interested in the interplay between these two different parts of your practice, particularly because your drawings often feel very alive and multi-dimensional. <\/b><\/p>\n Yes you\u2019re right though I have been doing a few landscapes recently in an attempt to broaden out a bit. I like switching around mediums to stay fresh. When I get bored of sculpting there\u2019s always drawing and vice versa. Oil painting is the thing I\u2019d like to have a go at next.<\/span><\/p>\n How do you know when something you are working on is finished? <\/b><\/p>\n There\u2019s a point when I do something unnecessary<\/span> that amounts to fiddling for the sake of it. At that moment I must stop immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n When do you know it\u2019s time to give up on something?<\/b><\/p>\n I rarely do, because as Mrs Thatcher said, lots of people can start things but not many people can finish things. <\/span><\/p>\n I like switching around mediums<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Your T-shirt raises funds for akt, a charity for vulnerable LGBTQ+ young people, who are homeless or living in hostile environments. Why did you want to help support young people in the queer community specifically? If you\u2019re comfortable, what was your own experience of being a young gay person? <\/b><\/p>\n Even now young people can have a hard time coming out to their family and occasionally end up homeless. I\u2019m glad AKT exists as a fall back and would like to support it.<\/span><\/p>\n I never really thought of myself as \u2018gay\u2019, I just found both sexes attractive. I was ashamed of this, and still am in a way. I\u2019m worried people will think I\u2019m greedy or undiscriminating. It was always easier to call myself gay rather than bisexual. I think these feelings stick with you, even though it\u2019s far more ok to be gay, or bisexual, or anything else you like in London these days. <\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/4-6.jpg\")
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