Portraits of Musicians Performing
I am happiest making a portrait when I can show my subject passionately engaged with whatever portrays them at their most deeply engaged. I far prefer this sort of portraiture to my sitter just relating to me, only too conscious of myactionts and intentions. I have, however, also undergone some very rewarding experiences, one to one, but these are a different ball game. The existence of film enables me to chose the heightened expression of the subject's very soul when utterly unaware of anything other than their passionate pursuit. As a musician, myself, I closely identify with the depths of artistic and spiritual connection that one is abandoned to in the act of creating a deeply felt performance.
Oils
THE 2CELLOS
Stjepan Hauser. Oil on Board. 25"h X 30"w
I became hugely excited when I first saw and heard the 2Cellos, Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic. I was transfixed by the broad scope of their appeal - their playing, hugely emotional, passionate and lyrical, their presence on stage, oozing a sensuality overlaid with a sexual charge and flirtatious manner . . . All this, coupled with their youth and considerable beauty and their free and almost animal indolent ease of playing. . .was a knock-out. I just had to re-create the glorious experience of them and their playing in paintings. And so I have made a Diptych of the two of them.
The 2Cellos play a wide variety of music, ranging from so-called ‘Classical’ to popular, including film and dance music. The two pieces that really set me alight were, firstly, a setting of Oblivion, by Piazzola, for two cellos and orchestra, and also, most bewitching of all, their interpretation of Ennio Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe. These two gorgeous young men can also be hilarious and wickedly funny in a music / comedy double act.
Luka Sulik. Oil on board. h. 25.5" w. 30" (h. 65 cmsw. 76.25 cms)
Yo-Yo Ma
YO-YO MA PLAYING THE SUITE IN C MINOR NO:5. Oil on board. 16"h X 19"w
Yo-Yo Ma played all six of the Bach Suites at the Proms last year. It was a mind-blowing feat. I recorded most of the concert and have watched it so many times since. I have become totally enthralled by Yo-Yo’s performance. I adore Suites 5 and 6. I love them all, but the last two have an almost surreal beauty and complexity. I have drawn Yo-Yo performing part of number 5, which is imbued with sadness, even despair . . . The Sarabande, so apparently short and simple - its notes take up less than half a page(!) - bestrides life’s vast chasms, gazes, unflinchingly into those depths and across incomprehensible distances. This music speaks so eloquently of what moves us most and that, which is impossible to put into words, yet, on some such strange level, leaves us with the sense of a greater knowledge and understanding.
YO-YO MA PLAYING THE SUITE IN C MINOR NO:5. Oil on board. 30"h X 36"w
Nicola Benedetti
Nicola Benedetti playing Ma Bruch’s Violin Concerto. Oil on board.h. 13" (33cms) w. 14" (35.5cms)
In this small painting of Nicola Benedetti performing the violin concerto by Max Bruch, I portray her, wrapped, in the romantic slow movement. Parts of her are brightly lit and parts in violet tinted shadow. It is a rhapsodic portrait of beauty - Nicola, so lovely in herself - bright, vivid, dark . . . The music, the spirit of these same emotions.
Bob Marley
Bob Marley. Oil on board. h. 27" h X w. 42"
Bob Marley is a thrilling subject - a lissom big cat of a man . . . He embodies the spiritual, flowering lyrically through the physical in a restless explosive but graceful dance. I couldn't resist him, his beauty, his passion, his religious and moral integrity.
Here was a chance to paint the ardent intensity of his message, in a vibrant mix of colour, movement, gesture and high octane emotional expression. The cruciform composition of the painting - almost a Christlike crucifixion image - embraces a wide spreading format. Is it merely stage lighting, or is it an unearthly fire that flares behind him, around him, out of him?
This was a painting that, in the heat of working on it, excited me to a rare state of ecstasy - an unforgettable creation.
BACK TO BLACK - AMY WINEHOUSE
Back to Black - Amy Winehouse. Oil on board. h. 23" X w. 24"
Having started this new group of Pop icons with Bob Marley, my second painting portrays Amy Winehouse singing her iconic song, Back to Black. In this new group I am drawn to a totally different musical experience from the classical musicians I have previously been engaged with. Here I am gripped by a primarily theatrical experience, heightened by mood enhancing coloured lighting and the projection of the performer’s personality woven into song.
With Amy, I am drawn to her life of underlying tragedy, her dark sense of soul, yet this strange and fascinating singer, with the black voice of Jazz in her white waif’s body, projects a bunch of contradictions. In this performance of Back to Black, she moves powerfully through the remembered emotions of love, loss and rejection, while occasionally, momentarily flashing the very opposite with a look and a wink at her boyfriend in the audience. The diamond engagement ring flashes on her finger as she struts and waggles her tiny hips, half child, half woman. Her sexual appeal compounds the contradictions. It is not graceful and svelte, but defiant and gawky. Everything about her is over the top.There is a sense of unapologetic parody, that has, paradoxically, its own absolutely original and magnetic sexual appeal.
I have had a wonderful time making this painting. Raw emotion, enhanced by the theatrical coloured lighting, floods the singer’s face and body. It tells the story, not just of the broken love affair she sings of, but, seen now historically, seems to forecast the jagged line of her colourful but ultimately grim, short and tragic future.
RED SHIFT - DAVID BOWIE
Red Shift - David Bowie. Oil on board. h. 21" X w. 24"
Such beauty of human form . . . ! such ravishing colour . . . ! The blazing fiery red light floods half his face, the other half shines, luminous, in the palest of red’s opposite colour green. His one eye, lit dark and large, highlights its huge pupil, the lovely nose and the movement of the sensual mouth . . . ! As a painter I am ravished by the androgynous beauty of this singer in the performance of his song. The red light heightens the other-world-beyond of David Bowie’s imagined space exploration. Yet, at the same time, we are not allowed to forget that this is only play and dressing up; this is theatre.
Performing the famous Space Oddity - I portray Bowie, caught at that early moment in his career, inhabiting one of his most iconic roles. But, again, as with my portrait ofAmy Winehouse, the historic knowledge of the arc of this colourful and endlessly inventive artist’s life, his creative achievements, morphing from one personality to the next, and his ultimately untimely, sad (and possibly preventable) death inevitably informs my portrait. I am painting David Bowie, not just as he was at the moment of this performance, but, in a strange way, I feel I am portraying the whole life of this considerable, ever inventive artist.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS - KATE BUSH
Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush. Oil on board. h. 21” X w. 24"
I heard the voice of Kate Bush before I actually saw her. I was arrested by its eerie banshee sound. Then, when I saw her, I was struck by the way her voice so beautifully matched her lithe willowy body and her sinuous yet ghostly dancing. In this strange, original song she truly evokes the wildness of the Yorkshire moors. This song, so evocative of the eeire Victorian novel that inspires it, sets the tone and style of so much of her career that follows it.
Drawings
JACQUELINE DU PRES
Jackie du Pres’s star was in the ascendant when I was studying the viola at Music College in London in the 60s. I was captivated from the outset. She won all the prizes and was the envy of all. She had beauty, strength, grace and sensuality. She had a huge spirit. But, most striking of all, was her total abandon to the music she performed. In my portraits of Jackie, and of those that follow, it is this musical, spiritual and physical abandon that I try to portray in my portraits. In these portraits she is playing the Brahms E minor cello sonata with her soulmate and husband Daniel Barenboim.
Sir Simon Rattle
I have made these three studies of Sir Simon Rattle conducting Mahler's seventh symphony. As Mahler creates an infinite number of moods changing and developing during the course of one symphony, so also does Sir Simon recreate them, with his whole being. It is breathtaking to watch the music, in all its complexity, coursing through his blood and body, with a physical focus as intense and focused as a dancer, as bewitching and beautiful as well.
JOSHUA BELL
JOSHUA BELL - SIBELIUS VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MINOR
Joshua Bell, who plays sometimes together with Steven Isserlis, also has the ability to lose himself utterly in the music. I portray him here playing the Sibelius violin concerto. Like Steven, his playing is nuanced, subtly coloured, considered yet, at times, totally abandoned. As in all great artists his energy and vitality are supercharged and he radiates joy.
ALINA IBRAGIMOVA BACH CHACONNE FROM BACH’S PARTITA NO 2
ALINA IBRAGIMOVA - BACH CHACONNE FROM BACH’S PARTITA NO 2. h. 11.4" l. 14.8"
I first came across Alina Ibragimova playing at the Proms last summer. She performed all the unaccompanied work of Bach. I have portrayed her in what seems to me to be the deep spiritual centre of this great work, the ‘centre’, itself, of the Chaconne from Partita no 2 in D minor and one of the most still and sacred moments in all music. Alina’s interpretation is personal and idiosyncratic, scholarly yet impassioned in perfect balance.
Yo-Yo Ma
SPENT (AT THE END OF THE C MINOR SUITE)
This new drawing, and the painting that will follow it, will represent a complete contrast to most of my existing work. Usually I am drawn to movement, emotion and extreme moments, whether in the lives of animals, or, in my present series of performing musicians. This new portrait of Yo-Yo, expresses, instead, the utter stillness that follows the end of the performance of the 5th Suite in C minor by Bach. This C minor Suite is devastating. A bleak sadness - at times despair - permeates the work. Strange alterations of speed and mood, dark harmonies, interruptions, pauses and extreme intervals - particularly in the bleak Sarabande - suggest bottomless chasms and unanswerable questions. The whole idea of dance, the typical Suite, is stretched to its limits, with the final Gigue tripping and faltering as though breath and life itself almost ceases, before wearily resuming its fearful path.
Yo-Yo, still utterly immersed, body and soul, in this music, leans back in silence, moves the cello a little away from him. His bow, still in a bow hold, is stilled in mid air. His work is done but he darkness of the C minor Suite but slowly lightens as he, and we listeners, return to this world.
Original Artwork & Prints
Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing the original artwork or requesting prints.
Further Works
