On her Majesty's secret disservice

My sideways swipe at the Royal Jubilee is coming on okay. I attached the 1950's bakelite switch to the corner this afternoon, a sort of 'topping-out' ceremony. The size of the painting has been kept quite modest, so the 3D elements don't get lost. I'm inclined to leave the finished painting in a rough-and-ready state - after all, if I'm arguing for less coverage of the event, I don't want to be spending more hours than necessary portraying her Maj...

The Queen: Art and Image

The momentum surrounding the Queen's Diamond Jubilee has been slowly gathering pace in 2012. In preparation for an 'intervention' of my own, I've been making a stab at QEII's portrait. It's early days!!

Meanwhile the National Museum of Wales has a visiting exhibition about Queen Liz - "The Queen: Art and Image" - which ends this weekend. I seized my opportunity today, in a gap between rain showers, to head for the Museum to take a look.

I would have said there was a mixed bag on display ...but that might be misinterpreted as a crude shot at her maj, haha! There were the inevitable parade of royal family photos from the 1950's, '60's and '70's. But there were also some very interesting paintings and designs - kicking off with the Sex Pistols' 1977 "God Save the Queen" album cover.

It seems the Queen set about re-inventing herself after the death of Princess Diana in 1997. In 1998, artist Justin Mortimer created a painting called "The Queen", which appeared to rip her head off and float it above a stylised torso on a bright yellow background. According to the exhibition blurb "The public reaction... was adverse". Yet more challenging is the 2007 painting by Kim Dong-Yoo, "Elizabeth vs. Diana", where a portrait of the Queen has been created from 1,100 tiny hand paintings of Diana in blood red. I have to take my hat off to Kim for managing to make all 1,106 images to look exactly like Diana (and the overall image seen from the other side of the room looks recognisably like QEII).

In effect, the recent 're-invention' has officially allowed us all to see the Queen as human ...as well as take not-so-subtle swipes at her ageing image. The gloves are off!!

Portrait March 2012

The Fig Tree

acrylic on canvas

30 x 40cm

This portrait is essentially what I was trying to achieve with my earlier self-portrait. The background colour (orange) remains a key component of the finished work.

I'm very pleased with it!

Pontcanna Gallery

Spring has arrived, the sun is shining so I decided to visit Pontcanna Street Gallery. I'd been tipped off that my friend Lynne was exhibiting there. To my delight another fellow college graduate, AndyLumbourg, also had some paintings on show.

I'm ashamed I've never visited Pontcanna Street Gallery before now. It is quite delightful, in one of the nicest streets in Cardiff, friendly, welcoming and busy. There were a number of well known Cardiff and Wales artists on display, including the paintily Mark Samuel (whose work I first noticed several years ago). It also claims to sell work by John Knapp-Fisher, who was a minor inspiration to me when I was a teenager living in West Wales.

Well, the standard is extremely high. I'll have to work hard before I've got a suitable range of paintings worthy of display here. Portraits of mwah probably do not have the required universal appeal, haha.

Self Portrait January 2012

30cm x 40cm

acrylic on canvas

Homage to Rembrandt

I've always liked Rembrandt's moody self portraits, which seem to reflect a humerous honesty of middle age. So I've attempted something similar of myself, with mixed results. It is still missing something. My intended hunch-shouldered grimace has got lost somewhere and the vibrant colours maybe contradict the grumpy pout.

I'll probably write this one off and start anew!

Neice paintings but erm, ne-phew and far between

At last a few paintings to show for 2011. I think these are the first I've ever painted using photographs as a source. They turned out surprisingly well, if I do say so myself!

These are portraits of my neices and nephew. They live overseas so I couldn't ask them for a personal sitting but, in any case, I doubt they'd sit still for long enough.

I've always liked the technique of using the background colour of the canvas to show through as part of the finished scheme. In these instances I deliberately chose a strong colour and painted the subject with relative colour hues. The green background, admittedly, was a bit of a challenge but Alfi, my neice, is a bit of an extrovert character so I'm sure she'll take it in good spirit!

All three are acrylic paint on canvas, 150x150mm.