Bill Leak talks with Magda Keaney about his portrait of Robert Hughes

• tell us about how you came to paint a portrait of Hughes so soon after his car accident
  
  
• So this was before the car accident?
  
  
• 'a black period of his life'
  
  
• 'He really is a tenacious bastard, and he's bloody tough'
  
  
• Larger than life
  
  
• What was Hughes response?
  
  
• Related works in the collection
  
  
• Back to the portrait

Robert Hughes -
Nothing if not critical 2001
by Bill Leak (b. 1956)
oil on canvas
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2002

Do you generally work on a large scale?

On big formats? No, not always. I like to work on a large scale, though.

You obviously consciously decided to make it larger than life.

Well, slightly larger than life. Bob is a big bloke, but he's big in terms of his own authority. He is also a big, generous bloke, and he is an overwhelming character. He is one of those blokes who fills up a room. So a little mousy painting of Bob wouldn't have been appropriate for what I wanted to say about him. I wanted the thing landscape format so you could see the way that he was always walking round on these sticks, and the pain that he was going through. I mean, it's physically bloody demanding, walking round like that on those sticks, anyway, and when your whole body has been shattered and you've got broken bones all over you…