WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.600 --> 00:00:01.433 Thank you, Gill, 2 00:00:01.433 --> 00:00:04.080 and thank you to everyone for joining us 3 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:07.270 for this wonderful conversation that we are about to have 4 00:00:07.270 --> 00:00:10.630 in relation to our Shakespeare to Winehouse exhibition. 5 00:00:10.630 --> 00:00:14.130 This is a fabulous show that has travelled to Canberra 6 00:00:14.130 --> 00:00:17.510 all the way from the National Portrait Gallery in London. 7 00:00:17.510 --> 00:00:22.050 It's a distillation of down from their collection 8 00:00:22.050 --> 00:00:27.050 of over 200,000 portraits down to a selection of 84 works. 9 00:00:27.050 --> 00:00:28.860 And as the name suggests, 10 00:00:28.860 --> 00:00:33.860 it's everyone from William Shakespeare to Amy Winehouse, 11 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:38.780 it's an exhibition that encompasses the incredible richness 12 00:00:38.780 --> 00:00:40.440 and breadth and depth 13 00:00:40.440 --> 00:00:42.840 of NPG London's extraordinary collection. 14 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:45.660 So we are very excited to have 16th century 15 00:00:45.660 --> 00:00:48.410 panel paintings in the exhibition, 16 00:00:48.410 --> 00:00:50.200 as well as some wonderful digital works 17 00:00:50.200 --> 00:00:53.460 and fantastic sculptures, some beautiful photography. 18 00:00:53.460 --> 00:00:55.470 And I think, yeah, 19 00:00:55.470 --> 00:00:58.520 there's just so many wonderful things that gives you... 20 00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:00.650 The exhibition gives you a really wonderful insight 21 00:01:00.650 --> 00:01:05.450 into the incredible depth of NPG London's collection 22 00:01:05.450 --> 00:01:09.010 and the amazing stories and history and art history 23 00:01:09.010 --> 00:01:13.460 that is represented and encapsulated in it. 24 00:01:13.460 --> 00:01:16.360 And I guess one of the hero works of the exhibition 25 00:01:16.360 --> 00:01:18.250 is the painting that you can see behind me. 26 00:01:18.250 --> 00:01:19.890 It's a beautiful portrait 27 00:01:19.890 --> 00:01:22.760 of the singer and musician, Ed Sheeran, 28 00:01:22.760 --> 00:01:24.880 painted by Colin Davidson 29 00:01:24.880 --> 00:01:29.650 and Colin is awake in Belfast. 30 00:01:29.650 --> 00:01:31.660 Early for him, late for us here, 31 00:01:31.660 --> 00:01:36.080 but he has very kindly agreed to talk to us this evening 32 00:01:36.080 --> 00:01:40.000 about his work, not just his portraits, 33 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:43.010 but also his non-portrait work. 34 00:01:43.010 --> 00:01:45.440 So we're in for a really fascinating conversation 35 00:01:45.440 --> 00:01:48.203 and welcome, Colin and thank you for joining us. 36 00:01:49.710 --> 00:01:51.300 Jo, thank you very much indeed. 37 00:01:51.300 --> 00:01:52.940 It's a pleasure to be here. 38 00:01:54.260 --> 00:01:55.530 I suppose I should say that 39 00:01:55.530 --> 00:02:00.143 you're all very welcome here to my studio in County Down. 40 00:02:01.750 --> 00:02:04.560 As Gill was saying, 41 00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:09.140 from my point of view, it's a real privilege 42 00:02:09.140 --> 00:02:14.140 to have the painting of Ed with you all, 43 00:02:14.260 --> 00:02:17.180 and it's one of the... 44 00:02:17.180 --> 00:02:19.888 Well it's I suppose the only plus 45 00:02:19.888 --> 00:02:24.888 in the fact that the National Portrait Gallery in London 46 00:02:25.200 --> 00:02:28.025 is going through a bit of work 47 00:02:28.025 --> 00:02:32.490 that they can tour some work 48 00:02:32.490 --> 00:02:36.183 and I'm thrilled that they've chosen this particular place. 49 00:02:39.080 --> 00:02:41.200 What I want to do as Gill was saying 50 00:02:41.200 --> 00:02:46.200 is kind of go through a little bit of my career to date, 51 00:02:47.250 --> 00:02:51.533 focusing mainly on the portrait work. 52 00:02:52.930 --> 00:02:55.300 But the reason why I suppose 53 00:02:55.300 --> 00:03:00.300 I'm also focusing on some of the other work 54 00:03:01.280 --> 00:03:03.563 is because there's context to it. 55 00:03:04.400 --> 00:03:07.110 That's very much how I was led through 56 00:03:07.110 --> 00:03:10.603 to painting the human face around 12 years ago. 57 00:03:13.910 --> 00:03:15.560 I want to start off with a quote. 58 00:03:17.160 --> 00:03:21.160 This is by the author, Andrew Graham Dixon, 59 00:03:21.160 --> 00:03:22.930 when he was writing about 60 00:03:22.930 --> 00:03:25.433 the British painter Howard Hodgkin. 61 00:03:26.570 --> 00:03:29.290 He said it is usually a mistake to take on trust 62 00:03:29.290 --> 00:03:31.713 what artists have to say about their own work. 63 00:03:32.820 --> 00:03:36.070 There's no substitute for looking at the art itself, 64 00:03:36.070 --> 00:03:38.220 which invariably refutes 65 00:03:38.220 --> 00:03:40.763 or complicates their remarks about it. 66 00:03:42.030 --> 00:03:46.160 Artists' statements hold out the false promise 67 00:03:46.160 --> 00:03:48.460 of a dangled bunch of keys, 68 00:03:48.460 --> 00:03:52.520 none of which proves to turn in the lock. 69 00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:54.070 Now, what I'm not saying is 70 00:03:54.070 --> 00:03:57.450 don't pay the blindest bit of attention to what I'm saying, 71 00:03:57.450 --> 00:04:02.450 but what I am saying is that we need to be conscious 72 00:04:04.810 --> 00:04:09.320 that art is and viewing art and interacting with art 73 00:04:09.320 --> 00:04:13.513 is an intensely personal experience. 74 00:04:15.370 --> 00:04:19.303 Everybody interprets a piece of art in their own way. 75 00:04:21.490 --> 00:04:26.490 And that's what kind of draws us in, I suppose. 76 00:04:28.700 --> 00:04:31.227 So if I can just start here, 77 00:04:31.227 --> 00:04:33.950 I'm gonna go back to 1986 78 00:04:39.250 --> 00:04:43.260 to a painting that I did of my hometown. 79 00:04:43.260 --> 00:04:45.690 This is the Belfast that... 80 00:04:47.100 --> 00:04:49.340 Not all streets were like this, 81 00:04:49.340 --> 00:04:53.342 but this was very much a derelict street, 82 00:04:53.342 --> 00:04:57.590 and I suppose I was discovering 83 00:04:57.590 --> 00:05:00.000 and looking at the ways in which 84 00:05:02.770 --> 00:05:07.770 we could explore or the magic of painting to an extent, 85 00:05:09.430 --> 00:05:11.639 how a two dimensional plane 86 00:05:11.639 --> 00:05:16.639 could become three dimensions. 87 00:05:17.940 --> 00:05:20.340 I suppose I was looking at the background 88 00:05:20.340 --> 00:05:22.500 and the mid ground and the foreground, 89 00:05:22.500 --> 00:05:24.993 almost quite like a stage set. 90 00:05:26.418 --> 00:05:30.820 And I suppose as time went on, 91 00:05:30.820 --> 00:05:35.640 I realised that I wanted to explore 92 00:05:35.640 --> 00:05:38.960 my hometown, my city more and more, 93 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:43.103 and as the Good Friday Agreement came, that was 1990, 94 00:05:45.117 --> 00:05:48.820 that was about 12 years after this little painting was made, 95 00:05:48.820 --> 00:05:51.570 I was in my teens when I made this one. 96 00:05:51.570 --> 00:05:52.751 Wow. 97 00:05:52.751 --> 00:05:56.103 I started to, 98 00:05:58.240 --> 00:06:00.570 I suppose, be very aware of the city 99 00:06:00.570 --> 00:06:03.250 and how it was changing and developing 100 00:06:04.110 --> 00:06:07.810 post the Good Friday Agreement here. 101 00:06:07.810 --> 00:06:12.810 And I went back and I just got on very high viewpoints 102 00:06:13.850 --> 00:06:18.850 and I painted I suppose the city, the new parts of it, 103 00:06:20.130 --> 00:06:21.373 the old parts of it, 104 00:06:22.310 --> 00:06:27.310 exploring, I suppose not just the pattern quality 105 00:06:30.600 --> 00:06:32.523 of what was laid out ahead of me, 106 00:06:34.033 --> 00:06:37.680 and the formal qualities of light and shade 107 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:40.683 and space and colour and pattern, 108 00:06:41.660 --> 00:06:45.940 but also looking at the psychological aspect of the city 109 00:06:45.940 --> 00:06:49.783 as a living being. 110 00:06:51.340 --> 00:06:54.433 It's almost a portrait of this city. 111 00:06:56.290 --> 00:06:59.030 As it has changed and as it was changing 112 00:07:00.410 --> 00:07:05.410 from the many decades of decline during the dark days here. 113 00:07:06.886 --> 00:07:11.040 And also exploring paint, 114 00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:12.330 also looking, I suppose, 115 00:07:12.330 --> 00:07:17.330 at the fact that oil paint could become equivalents 116 00:07:20.700 --> 00:07:22.373 for what I was trying to paint. 117 00:07:23.433 --> 00:07:24.960 So in other words, if you have a look 118 00:07:24.960 --> 00:07:26.593 at this painting in particular, 119 00:07:27.820 --> 00:07:32.580 it's very much the thick slaby, 120 00:07:32.580 --> 00:07:36.083 sort of almost trialled on paint, 121 00:07:36.980 --> 00:07:39.820 was used for the building 122 00:07:39.820 --> 00:07:42.620 and the architecture and the bridges, 123 00:07:42.620 --> 00:07:47.620 but it felt so wrong to treat the water in that same way. 124 00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:53.077 So the water is treated in a very liquid way. 125 00:07:55.530 --> 00:08:00.530 Just constantly exploring why people make paintings, 126 00:08:01.690 --> 00:08:03.163 what paintings are for, 127 00:08:04.670 --> 00:08:05.780 and at the same time, 128 00:08:05.780 --> 00:08:10.780 looking at city as a portrait of sorts. 129 00:08:13.840 --> 00:08:18.840 I make a Belfast painting every year now. 130 00:08:18.990 --> 00:08:20.963 So kind of a touchstone for me. 131 00:08:22.230 --> 00:08:24.780 This was what I made about five years ago. 132 00:08:24.780 --> 00:08:29.780 And the wonderful thing about Belfast 133 00:08:30.090 --> 00:08:34.740 is that you can get high up on the mountains and hills 134 00:08:34.740 --> 00:08:38.283 kind of around it, and it offers panoramic views. 135 00:08:40.390 --> 00:08:44.503 And so you're never really done exploring it. 136 00:08:45.690 --> 00:08:47.770 As I said, it's a touchstone for me 137 00:08:48.770 --> 00:08:53.233 and it's kind of very much a way of me learning, 138 00:08:55.160 --> 00:08:59.770 I suppose, me able to discern what I've learned 139 00:08:59.770 --> 00:09:01.250 about paint and painting 140 00:09:01.250 --> 00:09:04.313 through the 12 months since the last one. 141 00:09:07.330 --> 00:09:09.750 This is a New York painting 142 00:09:09.750 --> 00:09:13.393 that I made a number of years ago as well. 143 00:09:14.290 --> 00:09:17.480 And again, you can see the exploration 144 00:09:17.480 --> 00:09:21.113 into pattern in particular, 145 00:09:22.306 --> 00:09:26.260 and I suppose this magical illusion 146 00:09:26.260 --> 00:09:27.730 that we all forget about now, 147 00:09:27.730 --> 00:09:30.130 since we look at photography on our smartphones, 148 00:09:31.230 --> 00:09:35.170 this magical illusion of being able to... 149 00:09:37.714 --> 00:09:39.664 Of a two dimensional plane becoming 3D. 150 00:09:44.250 --> 00:09:48.883 Around, I suppose two thousand and, 151 00:09:51.640 --> 00:09:55.290 probably five, six, 152 00:09:55.290 --> 00:09:58.780 I realised that I want to continue on in an urban theme, 153 00:09:58.780 --> 00:10:03.273 but I wanted to look at the city in a different way, 154 00:10:04.386 --> 00:10:05.470 wanted to bring colour into it, 155 00:10:05.470 --> 00:10:07.980 wanted to bring abstraction into it, 156 00:10:07.980 --> 00:10:09.830 wanted to bring a certain questioning 157 00:10:09.830 --> 00:10:14.830 of what reality is, I suppose, into it. 158 00:10:17.260 --> 00:10:22.260 And when I was looking in the window of a shop, 159 00:10:23.270 --> 00:10:28.270 I had this sort of idea that our brain filters out, 160 00:10:29.599 --> 00:10:34.490 our brain filters out what our eyes actually see, 161 00:10:34.490 --> 00:10:36.810 so when we're looking at, for instance, 162 00:10:36.810 --> 00:10:38.973 a pair of shoes in the window of a shop, 163 00:10:39.820 --> 00:10:42.480 our brain filters out the reflection 164 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:45.630 so that we can see through the glass, 165 00:10:45.630 --> 00:10:46.970 but I thought it would be fascinating 166 00:10:46.970 --> 00:10:51.163 to see if I could paint both together, 167 00:10:52.260 --> 00:10:56.060 and that's what I decided to do. 168 00:10:56.060 --> 00:11:00.720 And this again is a Belfast painting of a sports shop. 169 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:04.660 And again, you can just about make out 170 00:11:04.660 --> 00:11:07.200 the rugby ball and the sports shoes and the clothes, 171 00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:09.860 and you can make out the city hall in the background, 172 00:11:09.860 --> 00:11:11.610 but that's not really the point. 173 00:11:11.610 --> 00:11:15.480 The point is that throughout all of these paintings, 174 00:11:15.480 --> 00:11:17.903 the subject is a sheet of glass. 175 00:11:19.100 --> 00:11:23.080 The subject are not the people in the street 176 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:28.080 or the bus going past, or the people in the cafe, 177 00:11:29.140 --> 00:11:34.140 the people or the subject is very much the sheet of glass. 178 00:11:36.961 --> 00:11:37.960 And I had this idea that 179 00:11:37.960 --> 00:11:40.980 it almost could be the same sheet of glass 180 00:11:40.980 --> 00:11:43.993 that I was lugging around the world, 181 00:11:43.993 --> 00:11:48.993 and basically making a painting of the same sheet of glass. 182 00:11:50.393 --> 00:11:51.726 Obviously I didn't do that. 183 00:11:51.726 --> 00:11:54.280 These are simply the windows. 184 00:11:54.280 --> 00:11:57.130 This is a Chicago painting. 185 00:11:57.130 --> 00:12:01.500 The last one was a London painting. 186 00:12:01.500 --> 00:12:04.113 First one was my hometown. 187 00:12:05.020 --> 00:12:10.020 And as time went on, these were acrylic paintings, these, 188 00:12:13.517 --> 00:12:15.960 and I suppose I felt that texture 189 00:12:15.960 --> 00:12:18.030 was wrong to build into them. 190 00:12:18.030 --> 00:12:19.970 What I was describing was something 191 00:12:19.970 --> 00:12:22.000 glossy and shiny and flat, 192 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:23.860 and it was wrong to start 193 00:12:23.860 --> 00:12:26.563 to pick bits out and thicker paint. 194 00:12:27.580 --> 00:12:32.580 And with an aim to get a much more glassy surface, 195 00:12:33.950 --> 00:12:35.573 I started using oil paint. 196 00:12:36.570 --> 00:12:39.560 And this is a very, almost mechanical way of painting, 197 00:12:39.560 --> 00:12:43.153 where I was treating everything as an equal. 198 00:12:43.989 --> 00:12:46.180 There was no part of the painting 199 00:12:46.180 --> 00:12:48.350 that was treated differently 200 00:12:48.350 --> 00:12:51.580 and everything had this blended look to it as well, 201 00:12:51.580 --> 00:12:56.193 so that it sort of almost had a moving glassy feel to it. 202 00:12:57.280 --> 00:12:58.500 These paintings were all quite big, 203 00:12:58.500 --> 00:13:01.630 so it was almost as if you could, 204 00:13:01.630 --> 00:13:04.740 whenever they were up in gallery walls, 205 00:13:04.740 --> 00:13:08.440 it's almost as if you could actually feel 206 00:13:08.440 --> 00:13:11.340 that you were standing on the street, if that makes sense. 207 00:13:14.317 --> 00:13:19.317 Again, the traffic light, the car, the man on the street, 208 00:13:21.710 --> 00:13:24.687 the people enjoying coffee inside the cafe, 209 00:13:24.687 --> 00:13:27.303 they're all as important. 210 00:13:28.240 --> 00:13:32.650 And the only constant in the painting 211 00:13:32.650 --> 00:13:34.470 was the sheet of glass. 212 00:13:34.470 --> 00:13:36.430 And I became very, very aware 213 00:13:36.430 --> 00:13:38.983 about constant in the painting. 214 00:13:40.246 --> 00:13:42.490 Became very, very aware of a singular thing 215 00:13:42.490 --> 00:13:44.460 that I was painting, 216 00:13:44.460 --> 00:13:47.843 even though there was a bustle going on or the illusion, 217 00:13:49.650 --> 00:13:54.650 what I was really focusing on was a single subject, 218 00:13:55.570 --> 00:13:56.803 a sheet of glass. 219 00:13:57.834 --> 00:14:02.834 And I suppose really 220 00:14:03.210 --> 00:14:06.273 what was happening with that was science, you know. 221 00:14:07.400 --> 00:14:12.400 There was light reflected, light refracted, 222 00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:14.900 and that's what made the difference 223 00:14:14.900 --> 00:14:18.890 to what or how I painted that sheet of glass 224 00:14:18.890 --> 00:14:21.053 because of how the light was working. 225 00:14:23.793 --> 00:14:26.727 And that was a fascinating kind of discovery for me 226 00:14:27.810 --> 00:14:31.465 that actually the city, 227 00:14:31.465 --> 00:14:35.160 the bustling street wasn't important, 228 00:14:35.160 --> 00:14:38.650 the important bit was the singular sheet of glass. 229 00:14:38.650 --> 00:14:41.223 And that has stuck with me to this day, 230 00:14:42.150 --> 00:14:45.200 even when I'm making the portraits. 231 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:48.470 I think that's where I was comfortable 232 00:14:48.470 --> 00:14:50.210 making paintings of heads 233 00:14:50.210 --> 00:14:55.210 because where there's a singular subject in these paintings, 234 00:14:56.420 --> 00:15:00.180 there's a singular subject with the heads. 235 00:15:00.180 --> 00:15:04.240 But how I got into the portrait painting, 236 00:15:04.240 --> 00:15:09.240 I suppose was largely by accident. 237 00:15:09.470 --> 00:15:11.330 I had made portrait paintings 238 00:15:11.330 --> 00:15:15.203 throughout my career before that, just maybe one a year. 239 00:15:16.760 --> 00:15:21.760 And they were paintings that I was commissioned to make. 240 00:15:23.330 --> 00:15:26.203 I didn't see myself as a portrait painter at all, 241 00:15:27.233 --> 00:15:32.233 but I suppose I enjoyed dipping in and out of it. 242 00:15:36.860 --> 00:15:38.183 I never showed them, 243 00:15:39.610 --> 00:15:44.610 but whenever I was making these large window paintings, 244 00:15:46.730 --> 00:15:47.840 I was at an exhibition 245 00:15:47.840 --> 00:15:50.400 and I bumped into an old friend of mine 246 00:15:50.400 --> 00:15:52.163 and he had changed his look. 247 00:15:53.491 --> 00:15:55.718 He's a Belfast performer 248 00:15:55.718 --> 00:16:00.718 who goes under the name of Duke Special. 249 00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:06.120 And he'd grown dreadlocks and he had eye makeup, 250 00:16:06.420 --> 00:16:08.720 and he had very quirky clothes 251 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:10.770 and I thought, flip, 252 00:16:10.770 --> 00:16:13.210 it'd be really interesting to paint him. 253 00:16:13.210 --> 00:16:15.770 So I asked him if I could paint him and he said, yes, 254 00:16:15.770 --> 00:16:17.800 but we only got around to doing it 255 00:16:17.800 --> 00:16:19.330 about two years after that, 256 00:16:19.330 --> 00:16:21.280 I was in no rush to make this painting. 257 00:16:22.409 --> 00:16:24.993 And it was meant to be a one off. 258 00:16:26.800 --> 00:16:29.220 And this is the painting of Duke. 259 00:16:29.220 --> 00:16:33.280 And this was, as I say, was meant to be a one off, 260 00:16:33.280 --> 00:16:35.900 but I showed it at a couple of exhibitions, 261 00:16:35.900 --> 00:16:37.523 I won a few awards for it, 262 00:16:38.534 --> 00:16:39.610 and then suddenly I was getting 263 00:16:39.610 --> 00:16:41.610 way more attention for this one painting 264 00:16:42.690 --> 00:16:47.350 than for any other painting that I'd made before. 265 00:16:47.350 --> 00:16:52.100 And, you know, there's so many aspects 266 00:16:52.100 --> 00:16:57.100 of the decisions made in this one painting back in 2010 267 00:16:59.370 --> 00:17:02.270 that continue to this day. 268 00:17:02.270 --> 00:17:03.893 The scale for instance. 269 00:17:05.100 --> 00:17:09.590 The size of this painting is accidental to an extent too, 270 00:17:09.590 --> 00:17:12.920 because I had a canvas stretched in the studio 271 00:17:12.920 --> 00:17:17.920 for one of my window paintings. 272 00:17:18.080 --> 00:17:21.083 I felt I needed to paint Duke larger than life. 273 00:17:22.250 --> 00:17:25.900 And I simply just grabbed that canvas that I'd stretched 274 00:17:25.900 --> 00:17:29.240 and started to make the painting that size. 275 00:17:29.240 --> 00:17:33.423 And that's the size of the painting of Ed behind you there. 276 00:17:34.580 --> 00:17:35.413 Yeah and a lot of your works 277 00:17:35.413 --> 00:17:40.413 are sort of what, 120 centimetres by 130 or thereabouts? 278 00:17:40.690 --> 00:17:42.223 Around that, yeah, yeah. 279 00:17:43.730 --> 00:17:47.423 I mean, yeah, in some ways, 280 00:17:48.470 --> 00:17:51.860 most of the work that I've made is that size. 281 00:17:51.860 --> 00:17:54.210 I suppose I started thinking about that 282 00:17:54.210 --> 00:17:56.219 because first it worked, 283 00:17:56.219 --> 00:18:00.697 and secondly, I saw everybody as an equal 284 00:18:04.950 --> 00:18:07.513 and wanted to treat everybody as an equal. 285 00:18:08.620 --> 00:18:10.973 I was aware of this as a body of work. 286 00:18:12.900 --> 00:18:17.900 And I was also aware myself of setting boundaries 287 00:18:18.300 --> 00:18:20.443 in order to be free with paint. 288 00:18:21.660 --> 00:18:25.843 We need boundaries in life in order to be free. 289 00:18:26.698 --> 00:18:29.150 We need the boundary of the law 290 00:18:29.150 --> 00:18:31.350 in order that we can be free. 291 00:18:31.350 --> 00:18:34.860 So with painting, with art, 292 00:18:34.860 --> 00:18:37.260 we need the boundaries put in place 293 00:18:37.260 --> 00:18:41.360 and I suppose I very much decided 294 00:18:41.360 --> 00:18:44.857 to set myself the boundaries of that. 295 00:18:44.857 --> 00:18:46.720 But some people have criticised me for it 296 00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:51.720 because it sets up very much of a format to my work. 297 00:18:52.550 --> 00:18:55.160 But I don't mind that. 298 00:18:55.160 --> 00:18:57.870 I'm quite happy to work within that theme 299 00:18:57.870 --> 00:19:01.690 and to explore within that. 300 00:19:01.690 --> 00:19:06.090 And it allows you to readily compare 301 00:19:07.270 --> 00:19:10.910 the current painting that I'm working on with the last one, 302 00:19:10.910 --> 00:19:13.513 because they're essentially the same size. 303 00:19:14.710 --> 00:19:16.090 And certainly, 304 00:19:16.090 --> 00:19:17.820 and we'll probably get to this later, Colin, 305 00:19:17.820 --> 00:19:21.290 but with that, on that question of the sort of uniformity 306 00:19:21.290 --> 00:19:25.960 of the scale that you work at is really effective I think 307 00:19:25.960 --> 00:19:28.250 in terms of those series of works that you've done, 308 00:19:28.250 --> 00:19:30.420 the series of portraits of people from Jerusalem 309 00:19:30.420 --> 00:19:33.930 and the series of portraits that you did about the troubles, 310 00:19:33.930 --> 00:19:36.080 because it really sort of hones in on that, 311 00:19:36.080 --> 00:19:38.430 you know, that kind of common humanity really 312 00:19:38.430 --> 00:19:41.963 of these individuals as individuals. 313 00:19:44.266 --> 00:19:45.730 That is what it's all about, Jo. 314 00:19:45.730 --> 00:19:46.800 That's completely correct. 315 00:19:46.800 --> 00:19:48.900 And I'll come on and I'll talk about that. 316 00:19:51.470 --> 00:19:53.733 That's at the heart of this. 317 00:19:54.754 --> 00:19:55.670 That I suppose is at the heart 318 00:19:55.670 --> 00:19:57.010 from a psychological point of view 319 00:19:57.010 --> 00:19:59.763 of why I'm making these paintings. 320 00:20:02.260 --> 00:20:04.460 If I can just move onto the next one, 321 00:20:04.460 --> 00:20:09.460 obviously this is a close up of the painting of Duke. 322 00:20:10.200 --> 00:20:14.860 And actually, I'll stop and I'll talk about the more formal 323 00:20:16.600 --> 00:20:20.903 craft related aspects with this painting. 324 00:20:22.240 --> 00:20:24.630 If you have a look at the eyes in this, 325 00:20:24.630 --> 00:20:26.820 this is drawn directly 326 00:20:26.820 --> 00:20:29.373 from the way that I treated the glass. 327 00:20:30.550 --> 00:20:34.210 So I'm painting these eyes in exactly the way 328 00:20:34.210 --> 00:20:39.210 that I treated those oil paintings of the shop fronts. 329 00:20:41.490 --> 00:20:46.490 The hair, the dreadlocks, the flesh 330 00:20:47.530 --> 00:20:50.503 is treated as I would the architecture. 331 00:20:52.090 --> 00:20:55.660 And even the scribbly lines left in the hair 332 00:20:55.660 --> 00:20:57.300 are very, very much the way 333 00:20:57.300 --> 00:21:00.453 that I would've treated the Belfast paintings. 334 00:21:02.290 --> 00:21:07.290 So here was a subject that I could use in it's own right 335 00:21:09.310 --> 00:21:12.340 to actually exploit the subject 336 00:21:12.340 --> 00:21:14.893 with the aim of simply making a painting, 337 00:21:16.540 --> 00:21:18.373 where at this scale, 338 00:21:19.670 --> 00:21:22.160 the hair can become something else. 339 00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:24.378 The flesh can become landscape. 340 00:21:24.378 --> 00:21:29.343 And so I was set out in this quest to explore this. 341 00:21:30.500 --> 00:21:35.500 Duke introduced me to the Dublin musician, Glen Hansard 342 00:21:39.786 --> 00:21:41.860 and I made a painting of him. 343 00:21:41.860 --> 00:21:44.543 And again, you can see the exploration of, 344 00:21:45.506 --> 00:21:49.350 at that scale, you know, the background, 345 00:21:51.720 --> 00:21:54.473 the eyes are very much treated like the glass. 346 00:21:55.620 --> 00:21:57.053 Everything else is treated. 347 00:21:57.945 --> 00:22:01.140 The hair's treated differently to the flesh, 348 00:22:01.140 --> 00:22:03.550 the clothes are treated differently to the flesh. 349 00:22:03.550 --> 00:22:07.080 And I was very aware of how paint 350 00:22:07.080 --> 00:22:10.253 could be used to again, become equivalent. 351 00:22:12.258 --> 00:22:13.818 And back to that original Belfast painting 352 00:22:13.818 --> 00:22:14.651 that I was talking about, 353 00:22:14.651 --> 00:22:18.393 where the water was treated in a different way. 354 00:22:20.334 --> 00:22:24.078 So this was fascinating for me. 355 00:22:24.078 --> 00:22:27.770 It was de Kooning who actually famously said 356 00:22:27.770 --> 00:22:32.770 that flesh was the reason that oil paint was invented. 357 00:22:34.460 --> 00:22:39.065 That's not necessarily true, but from his point of view, 358 00:22:39.065 --> 00:22:42.190 there was nothing like oil paint. 359 00:22:42.190 --> 00:22:44.730 There was nothing better than oil paint 360 00:22:44.730 --> 00:22:48.453 to become an equivalent for human flesh. 361 00:22:50.030 --> 00:22:52.780 I'll talk a little bit more about that as time goes on. 362 00:22:54.230 --> 00:22:58.853 This is a local play wright here called Mary Jones. 363 00:23:00.780 --> 00:23:03.993 I became very, very aware of... 364 00:23:03.993 --> 00:23:04.826 I mean, you can see it with 365 00:23:04.826 --> 00:23:06.830 the three paintings I've shown you so far 366 00:23:07.740 --> 00:23:12.740 that here are people lost in their own thoughts. 367 00:23:14.200 --> 00:23:17.113 Here are people who aren't engaging with me. 368 00:23:17.960 --> 00:23:20.840 They're not even aware that we as viewers 369 00:23:20.840 --> 00:23:22.433 are looking at them. 370 00:23:24.288 --> 00:23:27.490 And I became fascinated with that also 371 00:23:27.490 --> 00:23:29.680 from a psychological point of view, 372 00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:32.150 that this was nearly the polar opposite 373 00:23:32.150 --> 00:23:34.200 of what a portrait had been about in the past, 374 00:23:34.200 --> 00:23:39.200 where we feel as viewers that we are 375 00:23:39.350 --> 00:23:41.223 engaging with the person. 376 00:23:44.600 --> 00:23:48.836 A subject is often looking straight out at us 377 00:23:48.836 --> 00:23:52.513 and imposing on us what to think. 378 00:23:53.570 --> 00:23:57.300 In some ways I wasn't wanting to impose on anybody 379 00:23:57.300 --> 00:23:59.975 what to think whenever they viewed the painting. 380 00:23:59.975 --> 00:24:01.893 They think their own thoughts. 381 00:24:04.470 --> 00:24:09.470 They're seemingly unaware of us being in the room. 382 00:24:10.691 --> 00:24:11.524 And that's interesting, 383 00:24:11.524 --> 00:24:12.620 because I've sort of read 384 00:24:12.620 --> 00:24:14.990 what you said in painting Ed Sheeran, 385 00:24:14.990 --> 00:24:18.440 you wanted to get that moment where... 386 00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:19.510 Capture him where it was 387 00:24:19.510 --> 00:24:22.170 if he wasn't even aware of your existence. 388 00:24:22.170 --> 00:24:24.740 And that was actually a real challenge for him 389 00:24:24.740 --> 00:24:29.333 as such a famous and popular performer. 390 00:24:30.330 --> 00:24:32.230 Well, it was the opposite, you know? 391 00:24:33.150 --> 00:24:36.475 In some ways he's used with a camera stuck in his face. 392 00:24:36.475 --> 00:24:37.424 Yes. 393 00:24:37.424 --> 00:24:39.610 And I'll come on and I'll talk about my process, 394 00:24:39.610 --> 00:24:42.420 particularly relating to the portrait of Ed. 395 00:24:42.420 --> 00:24:47.420 But yeah, it's an interesting one. 396 00:24:50.960 --> 00:24:54.830 And here again is that sadly and tragically, 397 00:24:54.830 --> 00:24:59.830 this was the last portrait that Seamus Heaney sat for. 398 00:25:00.360 --> 00:25:04.730 And I was very fortunate and grateful 399 00:25:04.730 --> 00:25:06.080 to be able to get that photograph 400 00:25:06.080 --> 00:25:08.090 of Seamus with the painting, 401 00:25:08.090 --> 00:25:11.130 because this photograph was only taken 402 00:25:11.130 --> 00:25:15.183 really two months before he passed away. 403 00:25:16.950 --> 00:25:21.300 The (indistinct) a little film at the time 404 00:25:21.300 --> 00:25:23.043 of me making this painting. 405 00:25:23.970 --> 00:25:25.500 Seamus was still alive, 406 00:25:25.500 --> 00:25:28.723 but it was just a film that they wanted to make. 407 00:25:29.780 --> 00:25:34.780 And what I found myself doing was digging into the surface. 408 00:25:37.140 --> 00:25:38.540 If you have a look at the... 409 00:25:40.300 --> 00:25:45.140 If you have a look at his right cheek, 410 00:25:45.140 --> 00:25:47.123 you can see how I've scored into it. 411 00:25:48.942 --> 00:25:51.420 And there's a very three dimensional 412 00:25:51.420 --> 00:25:53.693 aspect to the paint in this. 413 00:25:54.540 --> 00:25:56.310 I was very aware because Seamus' work 414 00:25:56.310 --> 00:25:58.123 is very rooted in the landscape. 415 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:03.920 Seamus' work is about digging turf 416 00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:08.617 and as I say, it's very rooted in the landscape 417 00:26:08.617 --> 00:26:11.934 and it just instinctively became 418 00:26:11.934 --> 00:26:15.343 what this painting was actually about. 419 00:26:16.940 --> 00:26:21.400 This is another Belfast poet this time 420 00:26:21.400 --> 00:26:22.943 called Michael Longley, 421 00:26:23.900 --> 00:26:28.900 and I was drawn to making paintings 422 00:26:29.930 --> 00:26:32.320 of people who lived here, 423 00:26:32.320 --> 00:26:35.280 who were close at hand and who... 424 00:26:37.400 --> 00:26:38.810 It was interesting meeting people, 425 00:26:38.810 --> 00:26:42.700 paintings of people who were well known here as well, 426 00:26:42.700 --> 00:26:46.490 because that almost... 427 00:26:48.050 --> 00:26:51.010 The hard thing about portrait painting, 428 00:26:51.010 --> 00:26:54.150 which no one really tells you 429 00:26:54.150 --> 00:26:56.380 is that it's incredibly hard 430 00:26:56.380 --> 00:26:58.180 to make a decent painting of a head, 431 00:26:59.030 --> 00:27:04.030 but it's infinitely more complicated 432 00:27:04.690 --> 00:27:06.350 to make a decent painting of a head 433 00:27:06.350 --> 00:27:08.850 that looks like the person you're trying to paint. 434 00:27:09.886 --> 00:27:10.719 So in some ways, 435 00:27:10.719 --> 00:27:13.890 you're setting yourself the ultimate challenge 436 00:27:13.890 --> 00:27:15.620 as a portrait painter, 437 00:27:15.620 --> 00:27:19.423 because painting people who are well known, 438 00:27:20.370 --> 00:27:22.070 there's nowhere to hide. 439 00:27:22.070 --> 00:27:24.090 People will judge you 440 00:27:24.090 --> 00:27:27.663 on whether it looks like the person. 441 00:27:29.660 --> 00:27:31.996 This painting was in the BP Portrait Award. 442 00:27:31.996 --> 00:27:35.613 I think this was 2012. 443 00:27:37.129 --> 00:27:41.020 And got the public vote kind of award. 444 00:27:44.820 --> 00:27:46.830 So I was really pleased at that. 445 00:27:46.830 --> 00:27:51.830 But this also gives you an idea of the scale of the work... 446 00:27:52.270 --> 00:27:53.660 Well, you can see the scale of the work 447 00:27:53.660 --> 00:27:55.940 because you're standing in front of one, 448 00:27:55.940 --> 00:27:58.050 but because you're standing quite far out from it, 449 00:27:58.050 --> 00:27:59.793 you're not quite aware. 450 00:28:01.030 --> 00:28:02.610 If you were standing right beside it 451 00:28:02.610 --> 00:28:04.210 with your back against the wall, Jo, 452 00:28:04.210 --> 00:28:06.605 you would get a sense of the scale 453 00:28:06.605 --> 00:28:08.910 of the (indistinct), 454 00:28:08.910 --> 00:28:12.090 here again, gives you a sense of the scale. 455 00:28:12.090 --> 00:28:15.823 This again is a local poet called Sinéad Morrissey. 456 00:28:17.550 --> 00:28:19.760 As a general rule, Colin, you sort of, 457 00:28:19.760 --> 00:28:22.520 as I noticed in your sort of output of portraits, 458 00:28:22.520 --> 00:28:25.310 there is lots of poets and musicians and writers, 459 00:28:25.310 --> 00:28:28.230 are you as an artist most drawn 460 00:28:28.230 --> 00:28:29.830 to those subjects, do you think? 461 00:28:30.772 --> 00:28:32.390 I mean, it's a good question, Jo. 462 00:28:32.390 --> 00:28:36.313 I think I wing it to an extent. 463 00:28:37.310 --> 00:28:39.213 I wing it to a large extent, 464 00:28:40.190 --> 00:28:44.803 but largely, and I'm going back to this stage, 465 00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:50.248 I was waiting for somebody to introduce me to someone else. 466 00:28:50.248 --> 00:28:51.320 (laughing) 467 00:28:51.320 --> 00:28:54.260 The only person who I think 468 00:28:54.260 --> 00:28:58.440 I asked if I could paint them was Duke Special 469 00:28:58.440 --> 00:28:59.603 at the very start. 470 00:29:00.560 --> 00:29:02.710 Everybody else was introduced to me. 471 00:29:02.710 --> 00:29:04.120 The Glen Hansard painting was made 472 00:29:04.120 --> 00:29:06.133 because Duke introduced me to Glen. 473 00:29:07.430 --> 00:29:09.440 The lyric theatre in Belfast 474 00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:11.603 where a lot of my portraits hang. 475 00:29:14.958 --> 00:29:19.890 It was the lyric and the people within that 476 00:29:19.890 --> 00:29:20.820 who introduced me. 477 00:29:20.820 --> 00:29:25.203 So there was very much a poetic playwright musical feel 478 00:29:28.270 --> 00:29:32.680 to a lot of the portraits I was making at that stage. 479 00:29:32.680 --> 00:29:35.230 So I mean, it's since changed. 480 00:29:35.230 --> 00:29:36.950 And I mean, I've made probably 481 00:29:36.950 --> 00:29:40.970 270 portraits since since 2010. 482 00:29:49.010 --> 00:29:52.250 And obviously I've been commissioned to make lots of them. 483 00:29:52.250 --> 00:29:54.530 I'm not gonna show you them all now, 484 00:29:54.530 --> 00:29:56.080 but if you want to see them all, 485 00:29:56.080 --> 00:29:58.860 you would realise that there's a very vast array 486 00:29:58.860 --> 00:30:02.433 of different types people I've painted throughout. 487 00:30:04.420 --> 00:30:06.650 This is the British musician, Mark Knopfler 488 00:30:09.350 --> 00:30:10.933 of Dire Straits fame. 489 00:30:12.763 --> 00:30:14.700 Dire Straits are particularly big where you... 490 00:30:14.700 --> 00:30:16.873 They were particularly big where you are. 491 00:30:18.235 --> 00:30:22.583 Australia had a big fan base for that band. 492 00:30:23.745 --> 00:30:25.380 Yeah, I remember seeing them in Sydney in 1986 493 00:30:25.380 --> 00:30:27.452 and screaming myself hoarse. 494 00:30:27.452 --> 00:30:28.285 (laughing) 495 00:30:28.285 --> 00:30:29.118 Is that right? 496 00:30:29.118 --> 00:30:30.017 There you are. 497 00:30:30.017 --> 00:30:31.090 You lucky duck. 498 00:30:31.090 --> 00:30:34.910 I never actually got to see them as a band live. 499 00:30:34.910 --> 00:30:38.900 I saw Mark live a few times, but yeah. 500 00:30:38.900 --> 00:30:41.130 And again, Mark was introduced to me 501 00:30:41.130 --> 00:30:45.830 by another musician, Paul (indistinct), who knew him 502 00:30:46.840 --> 00:30:50.530 and I painted Paul because he was introduced to me as well. 503 00:30:50.530 --> 00:30:52.750 So there's this wonderful thread 504 00:30:52.750 --> 00:30:55.120 running through lots of the work, 505 00:30:55.120 --> 00:31:00.120 which I kind of love and which I kind of exploit. 506 00:31:04.360 --> 00:31:08.890 So going to the painting, which is behind you, Jo, 507 00:31:08.890 --> 00:31:10.600 this is going right back to the start. 508 00:31:10.600 --> 00:31:11.723 This is Ed's house. 509 00:31:14.848 --> 00:31:18.477 And what had happened was I had met Ed's dad first. 510 00:31:23.130 --> 00:31:25.063 Ed's father, just by chance. 511 00:31:26.142 --> 00:31:29.059 I'd made a painting of an olympian, 512 00:31:31.157 --> 00:31:33.900 a very famous Olympian from Belfast 513 00:31:33.900 --> 00:31:37.803 called Lady Mary Peters. 514 00:31:39.100 --> 00:31:42.110 And Mary was coming over to see the painting 515 00:31:42.110 --> 00:31:44.420 for the first time in my studio, 516 00:31:44.420 --> 00:31:46.980 and she asked if she could bring a few friends with her 517 00:31:46.980 --> 00:31:49.900 and who would've known that 518 00:31:49.900 --> 00:31:51.690 one of her oldest childhood friends 519 00:31:51.690 --> 00:31:54.213 who she brought with her was Ed Sheeran's granny? 520 00:31:55.080 --> 00:31:57.140 Wow. (laughing) 521 00:31:57.140 --> 00:31:59.223 That's often how my career works. 522 00:32:00.220 --> 00:32:01.070 The oddest thing. 523 00:32:01.969 --> 00:32:06.563 She brought with her, her son, Ed Sheeran's dad. 524 00:32:08.505 --> 00:32:10.837 And I unveiled the portrait of Lady Mary 525 00:32:12.802 --> 00:32:15.470 and everybody was enthusing, 526 00:32:15.470 --> 00:32:16.970 everybody's being very polite. 527 00:32:18.406 --> 00:32:23.406 And I got chatting to Ed's dad, John, 528 00:32:24.670 --> 00:32:28.543 about me possibly making a portrait of his son. 529 00:32:29.420 --> 00:32:32.030 And he said, well, actually, 530 00:32:32.030 --> 00:32:32.940 the reason why I'm here 531 00:32:32.940 --> 00:32:35.120 is that Ed is playing Belfast tonight, 532 00:32:35.120 --> 00:32:36.963 why don't you come and talk to him? 533 00:32:37.930 --> 00:32:38.763 Wow. 534 00:32:38.763 --> 00:32:39.596 And I said, yes. 535 00:32:39.596 --> 00:32:42.270 And my two girls were in their teens in those days. 536 00:32:42.270 --> 00:32:46.803 So I was fleeting me cool with my teenage girl, 537 00:32:48.893 --> 00:32:51.150 and then I was able to bring them along too 538 00:32:51.150 --> 00:32:52.733 and introduced them to Ed. 539 00:32:54.040 --> 00:32:56.610 And Ed loved the work, really related to it 540 00:32:56.610 --> 00:32:59.123 and said that he would love me to paint him. 541 00:33:01.199 --> 00:33:02.510 And that's how it was done. 542 00:33:02.510 --> 00:33:06.760 It wasn't a commission of sort, it was just a painting. 543 00:33:06.760 --> 00:33:09.253 And that's how I stumble through my career. 544 00:33:15.603 --> 00:33:16.436 You can look back and go, 545 00:33:16.436 --> 00:33:18.640 well, it's amazing the people you've met 546 00:33:18.640 --> 00:33:20.083 as a result of doing that. 547 00:33:21.010 --> 00:33:22.300 Really, that's what it's been. 548 00:33:22.300 --> 00:33:27.300 It's been about making my best possible work at every point, 549 00:33:28.400 --> 00:33:29.330 getting it seen, 550 00:33:30.593 --> 00:33:32.780 and then, you know, it's amazing 551 00:33:32.780 --> 00:33:34.060 the people that come my way 552 00:33:34.060 --> 00:33:37.030 or the people who are introduced to me. 553 00:33:37.030 --> 00:33:39.700 So I want to talk a little bit now, Jo, 554 00:33:39.700 --> 00:33:44.240 about the process of making a painting. 555 00:33:44.240 --> 00:33:45.363 Fantastic, yeah. 556 00:33:47.160 --> 00:33:51.453 This is me in Ed's home. 557 00:33:52.380 --> 00:33:56.893 I normally am only afforded one sitting. 558 00:33:58.040 --> 00:34:00.290 The people who I paint can't afford the time 559 00:34:00.290 --> 00:34:02.923 of coming back to my studio again and again. 560 00:34:03.990 --> 00:34:06.440 And that sitting is generally two to three hours. 561 00:34:08.070 --> 00:34:10.680 So I spent two to three hours with Ed. 562 00:34:10.680 --> 00:34:11.643 We chatted. 563 00:34:14.293 --> 00:34:18.330 I do not want the sitter to give me their best side 564 00:34:18.330 --> 00:34:20.810 and look in one particular direction. 565 00:34:20.810 --> 00:34:22.972 I want to see how the face works. 566 00:34:22.972 --> 00:34:26.880 I want to see how the face works when the sitter is happy 567 00:34:26.880 --> 00:34:29.730 or talking about melancholic things 568 00:34:29.730 --> 00:34:32.290 or talking about reflective things, 569 00:34:32.290 --> 00:34:34.163 or even when they're being quiet. 570 00:34:36.100 --> 00:34:41.100 And what I'm doing is I make maybe 30 or 40 little, 571 00:34:42.640 --> 00:34:44.960 what I call shorthand drawings 572 00:34:45.810 --> 00:34:47.910 that you can just about in this photograph 573 00:34:47.910 --> 00:34:50.573 see an outline of Ed's head. 574 00:34:51.450 --> 00:34:54.250 This is just a little pen drawing 575 00:34:54.250 --> 00:34:57.570 and I make about 30 of those. 576 00:34:57.570 --> 00:35:00.403 And what it's doing is I'm just plotting the face. 577 00:35:01.250 --> 00:35:04.180 They're not about likeness, particularly. 578 00:35:04.180 --> 00:35:09.180 They're more about getting the energy and trapping that, 579 00:35:10.760 --> 00:35:13.263 trapping the energy of the encounter. 580 00:35:14.750 --> 00:35:16.490 There's a camera there as well. 581 00:35:16.490 --> 00:35:18.573 Photography is obviously important. 582 00:35:19.630 --> 00:35:23.750 And I bring my photographs and my drawings 583 00:35:23.750 --> 00:35:26.073 back to my studio here, where I am now, 584 00:35:27.100 --> 00:35:30.763 and I make the painting in the months after that. 585 00:35:33.940 --> 00:35:37.710 How I start whenever I come back to the studio 586 00:35:37.710 --> 00:35:40.920 is I start to make more finished drawings 587 00:35:42.010 --> 00:35:46.097 to decide which pose, which angle I want to paint. 588 00:35:52.720 --> 00:35:57.720 Very often I start more than one painting of the sitter 589 00:35:58.010 --> 00:36:02.650 with a view that hopefully I can... 590 00:36:05.649 --> 00:36:06.949 One will come to the fore. 591 00:36:07.969 --> 00:36:11.760 In Ed's case, there were actually two that came to the fore. 592 00:36:12.757 --> 00:36:17.220 I ended up making two finished paintings. 593 00:36:17.220 --> 00:36:20.360 This is the portrait, which is obviously behind you. 594 00:36:20.360 --> 00:36:24.980 It's quite weird seeing it here on my screen in Ireland 595 00:36:24.980 --> 00:36:28.690 and looking at you and seeing it sitting behind you. 596 00:36:28.690 --> 00:36:30.433 Or yeah. 597 00:36:32.040 --> 00:36:33.553 I'll go back. 598 00:36:36.780 --> 00:36:39.372 But that's kind of the way it's made. 599 00:36:39.372 --> 00:36:44.372 The way that I structure my studio practise is very... 600 00:36:47.050 --> 00:36:50.473 These paintings are all built layer upon layer of paint. 601 00:36:52.160 --> 00:36:57.160 The first, I suppose, pass, the first few days spending, 602 00:36:59.230 --> 00:37:01.463 blocking the painting in, as I put it, 603 00:37:02.580 --> 00:37:05.983 it's really quite an abstract mess to start off with. 604 00:37:07.640 --> 00:37:11.553 And then I set it aside and I work on another painting. 605 00:37:13.160 --> 00:37:15.150 And then I set that one aside 606 00:37:15.150 --> 00:37:17.590 and I work on another painting. 607 00:37:17.590 --> 00:37:20.863 I can often be working on 10 paintings at the same time. 608 00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:28.660 I mean, the reason for that largely 609 00:37:28.660 --> 00:37:30.003 is to let the paint dry, 610 00:37:30.840 --> 00:37:32.653 so that I can work on it again. 611 00:37:34.500 --> 00:37:38.320 But one of the other lucky serendipitous 612 00:37:40.570 --> 00:37:42.930 byproducts of me doing that 613 00:37:42.930 --> 00:37:45.550 is that when I bring the painting back again 614 00:37:45.550 --> 00:37:48.770 to the, so a few weeks on, 615 00:37:48.770 --> 00:37:50.603 I'm seeing the whole thing afresh. 616 00:37:52.010 --> 00:37:54.460 I'm seeing it as a new piece 617 00:37:54.460 --> 00:37:57.610 that I'm not remotely close to. 618 00:37:57.610 --> 00:38:02.610 And you can make decisions on the painting based on that. 619 00:38:02.850 --> 00:38:07.850 So that still is the way that I work to this day. 620 00:38:10.370 --> 00:38:15.130 Glen Hansard going way, way back to 2010, 621 00:38:15.130 --> 00:38:18.400 the portrait of Ed I think was around, 622 00:38:19.717 --> 00:38:22.134 I think that was around 2016. 623 00:38:28.390 --> 00:38:32.350 Glenn used the painting that I made of him 624 00:38:32.350 --> 00:38:34.323 on the front cover of an album, 625 00:38:36.190 --> 00:38:37.730 which is amazing because 626 00:38:39.089 --> 00:38:42.383 I've been very much a fan of Ed's work, 627 00:38:43.810 --> 00:38:45.343 sorry, of Glen's work. 628 00:38:47.456 --> 00:38:48.289 Excuse me. 629 00:38:51.601 --> 00:38:53.851 (coughing) 630 00:38:56.280 --> 00:38:58.180 Just proof that we're going live here. 631 00:39:03.960 --> 00:39:05.487 Yeah. 632 00:39:05.487 --> 00:39:06.543 So coming back to this piece, 633 00:39:08.350 --> 00:39:11.300 Glen is particularly big in the States. 634 00:39:11.300 --> 00:39:13.833 He won an Oscar a few years ago, 635 00:39:15.081 --> 00:39:19.127 and since then, he's had a big following in the States. 636 00:39:20.947 --> 00:39:25.947 And I had a phone call from an attorney in the States 637 00:39:27.297 --> 00:39:32.297 who said that his client had seen the cover of the album, 638 00:39:35.790 --> 00:39:39.730 had particularly liked it, liked the painting 639 00:39:40.970 --> 00:39:42.520 and had also seen a painting 640 00:39:42.520 --> 00:39:44.910 that I had hanging in the Royal Academy 641 00:39:44.910 --> 00:39:47.373 in London at the time as well, 642 00:39:48.580 --> 00:39:50.933 and said, look, my client would like you 643 00:39:50.933 --> 00:39:51.920 to teach him to paint. 644 00:39:51.920 --> 00:39:53.670 Is there any way you could do that? 645 00:39:55.268 --> 00:39:59.080 And I said, look, I don't generally do that sort of thing, 646 00:39:59.080 --> 00:40:03.083 but let's see how it goes. 647 00:40:04.050 --> 00:40:08.540 And anyway, I ended up meeting 648 00:40:08.540 --> 00:40:12.600 this attorney's client from the States, 649 00:40:12.600 --> 00:40:16.203 teaching him to paint over the summer of 2012, 650 00:40:17.576 --> 00:40:20.933 and then making a few paintings of him. 651 00:40:23.084 --> 00:40:23.966 And this is the result. 652 00:40:23.966 --> 00:40:24.916 (gasping) 653 00:40:24.916 --> 00:40:26.320 No way. 654 00:40:26.320 --> 00:40:27.153 (laughing) 655 00:40:27.153 --> 00:40:27.986 Yeah. 656 00:40:29.747 --> 00:40:31.706 There you go. 657 00:40:31.706 --> 00:40:32.946 This is one of the... 658 00:40:32.946 --> 00:40:36.270 How I stumble in my career into these things. 659 00:40:36.270 --> 00:40:37.730 This isn't planned. 660 00:40:37.730 --> 00:40:40.937 This is a result of Brad having seen-- 661 00:40:43.661 --> 00:40:45.376 The album cover. 662 00:40:45.376 --> 00:40:47.070 And they're accidental things. 663 00:40:47.070 --> 00:40:50.460 In some ways the thing was never meant to be 664 00:40:50.460 --> 00:40:52.583 a cover of an album at all. 665 00:40:53.620 --> 00:40:56.703 So, I mean, in this particular painting, 666 00:40:58.150 --> 00:41:01.200 Brad sat for me in a hotel room. 667 00:41:01.200 --> 00:41:04.150 He was just off a transatlantic flight. 668 00:41:04.150 --> 00:41:06.663 He was exhausted, he needed his sleep. 669 00:41:07.700 --> 00:41:09.023 He was jet lagged. 670 00:41:10.091 --> 00:41:14.530 That's the Brad Pitt that I painted. 671 00:41:14.530 --> 00:41:17.050 And also, that's the Brad Pitt that I painted, 672 00:41:17.050 --> 00:41:18.810 this is the person I've been teaching to paint 673 00:41:18.810 --> 00:41:20.800 for a few months. 674 00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:22.380 And people often look at this painting, 675 00:41:22.380 --> 00:41:23.213 which is owned by 676 00:41:23.213 --> 00:41:26.433 the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. 677 00:41:30.279 --> 00:41:34.700 And they say, but that doesn't look much like Brad Pitt. 678 00:41:34.700 --> 00:41:38.080 And I say, well, when was the last time you saw Brad Pitt 679 00:41:38.080 --> 00:41:40.732 in a hotel room off a transatlantic flight? 680 00:41:40.732 --> 00:41:42.820 (indistinct). 681 00:41:42.820 --> 00:41:46.320 I said it flipping looks like Brad Pitt, okay? 682 00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:47.920 And then I made a couple of paintings of Brad. 683 00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:51.290 I made another one with his hair short. 684 00:41:51.290 --> 00:41:55.440 And this one looks a little bit more like Brad Pitt 685 00:41:55.440 --> 00:41:57.173 because he was less tired. 686 00:41:59.430 --> 00:42:00.760 But it really sort of speaks to 687 00:42:00.760 --> 00:42:03.370 that sort of discussion that we... 688 00:42:03.370 --> 00:42:05.600 Or that thing that we touched on a little bit earlier 689 00:42:05.600 --> 00:42:09.100 about people just being... 690 00:42:09.100 --> 00:42:11.000 Portraits are as much about humanity 691 00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:13.480 as they are about the identity 692 00:42:13.480 --> 00:42:18.060 or the popularity or the fame 693 00:42:18.060 --> 00:42:20.827 of the people that are represented in them. 694 00:42:20.827 --> 00:42:25.827 Liam Neeson here, these are just men. 695 00:42:25.828 --> 00:42:30.330 There's this wonderful equality about them. 696 00:42:30.330 --> 00:42:31.380 Yeah, it's fantastic. 697 00:42:33.710 --> 00:42:36.620 I mean, you've hit the nail on the head there completely. 698 00:42:36.620 --> 00:42:40.580 I'm not interested in celebrity at all. 699 00:42:40.580 --> 00:42:42.580 Never have been. 700 00:42:42.580 --> 00:42:44.943 Part of me despises it, actually. 701 00:42:46.660 --> 00:42:48.513 I mean, celebrity is fake. 702 00:42:49.530 --> 00:42:53.370 And what I suppose I'm doing is I'm... 703 00:42:53.370 --> 00:42:57.310 And also celebrity in the case of the people I'm painting 704 00:42:57.310 --> 00:42:59.690 is not self-imposed. 705 00:42:59.690 --> 00:43:04.690 Celebrity imposed by virtue of what their career is, 706 00:43:05.190 --> 00:43:07.790 what their profession is or by the outside world 707 00:43:07.790 --> 00:43:10.253 imposing celebrity onto them. 708 00:43:11.740 --> 00:43:14.960 And so, I mean, you're completely right. 709 00:43:14.960 --> 00:43:17.680 I mean, that's what's interesting in... 710 00:43:17.680 --> 00:43:20.640 Although I'm not interested in celebrity, 711 00:43:20.640 --> 00:43:23.740 that's what's interesting about painting 712 00:43:23.740 --> 00:43:27.210 people that the world calls celebrities, 713 00:43:27.210 --> 00:43:32.100 because as a portrait painter, it makes it fascinating, 714 00:43:32.100 --> 00:43:35.320 because you've got a facade to strip away. 715 00:43:35.320 --> 00:43:37.963 Yes, it must be really, really challenging. 716 00:43:39.450 --> 00:43:40.283 So what we're doing... 717 00:43:40.283 --> 00:43:42.870 I mean, taking the portrait of Liam 718 00:43:42.870 --> 00:43:44.896 that we're looking at now, Jo, 719 00:43:44.896 --> 00:43:47.363 and just following on from what you were saying, 720 00:43:49.724 --> 00:43:54.480 we were talking in the sitting about art 721 00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:57.260 and at one point, he was saying 722 00:43:57.260 --> 00:43:59.530 that he didn't have an interest in art 723 00:43:59.530 --> 00:44:01.803 until his wife introduced him to art. 724 00:44:03.440 --> 00:44:07.255 And this was just shortly after his wife 725 00:44:07.255 --> 00:44:10.480 had tragically passed away. 726 00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:14.460 And he became really moved 727 00:44:14.460 --> 00:44:19.460 as he was talking about his wife introducing him to art 728 00:44:19.640 --> 00:44:24.497 and introducing him, and that love and that passion 729 00:44:25.680 --> 00:44:27.130 continues to this day. 730 00:44:27.130 --> 00:44:29.343 And that's the portrait that I made. 731 00:44:32.921 --> 00:44:35.700 It's possibly one of the saddest paintings I've ever made. 732 00:44:35.700 --> 00:44:39.163 In some ways, it's of a grieving human being. 733 00:44:40.919 --> 00:44:44.600 And the fact that it's Liam Neeson 734 00:44:44.600 --> 00:44:48.523 is secondary to it. 735 00:44:49.629 --> 00:44:50.940 And I think he'd be cool with that. 736 00:44:50.940 --> 00:44:52.590 I think he'd be okay with that. 737 00:44:54.020 --> 00:44:54.873 Moving on. 738 00:44:56.621 --> 00:44:59.710 This is the only portrait I have made 739 00:45:01.040 --> 00:45:03.263 where I didn't meet the person. 740 00:45:04.720 --> 00:45:08.538 And I don't think I would ever do that again, I have to say. 741 00:45:08.538 --> 00:45:09.660 I think it's important that... 742 00:45:09.660 --> 00:45:13.090 I would love to now make a painting of her 743 00:45:13.090 --> 00:45:16.090 and see how different it would be through this. 744 00:45:16.090 --> 00:45:20.860 But Time Magazine saw the portrait of Brad 745 00:45:20.860 --> 00:45:22.240 in the Smithsonian 746 00:45:24.060 --> 00:45:27.873 and asked me to make a painting for the cover of Time. 747 00:45:29.124 --> 00:45:32.860 And I was really only given a number of weeks 748 00:45:32.860 --> 00:45:34.228 in order to do it. 749 00:45:34.228 --> 00:45:35.478 I think it was six weeks. 750 00:45:36.696 --> 00:45:40.550 But again, this painting is the same size 751 00:45:40.550 --> 00:45:41.653 as the one behind you. 752 00:45:44.090 --> 00:45:46.490 But it was used... 753 00:45:46.490 --> 00:45:50.580 I used film, I used photography 754 00:45:51.760 --> 00:45:56.750 and I built together a picture of this person, 755 00:45:56.750 --> 00:46:01.120 as I thought she might be 756 00:46:01.120 --> 00:46:05.410 if I were able to have her sitting in front of me. 757 00:46:05.410 --> 00:46:06.530 So yeah, this is a portrait 758 00:46:06.530 --> 00:46:10.133 of the German Chancellor of the time. 759 00:46:11.350 --> 00:46:13.180 This is another portrait 760 00:46:13.180 --> 00:46:15.403 of Michael Longley in the background. 761 00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:22.000 And I was invited to show the Queen and her husband 762 00:46:23.810 --> 00:46:28.343 and the then Deputy First Minister here. 763 00:46:29.860 --> 00:46:34.860 There was a seismic political event happened in Belfast. 764 00:46:36.430 --> 00:46:41.200 This was 2012, where Martin McGuinness, 765 00:46:42.570 --> 00:46:46.020 who was at one stage the commander in chief, 766 00:46:46.020 --> 00:46:49.100 I suppose, of the IRA here, 767 00:46:49.100 --> 00:46:52.040 where he met and shook hands with the Queen. 768 00:46:52.040 --> 00:46:52.873 Wow. 769 00:46:53.908 --> 00:46:55.180 And I was invited. 770 00:46:55.180 --> 00:46:57.550 It was an arts event 771 00:46:59.392 --> 00:47:04.392 and I was invited to show the delegation my paintings. 772 00:47:05.300 --> 00:47:06.490 After that event, 773 00:47:06.490 --> 00:47:09.653 it was then deemed appropriate by the organisers, 774 00:47:10.608 --> 00:47:13.513 a body called, Cooperation Ireland, 775 00:47:14.410 --> 00:47:17.603 that maybe I should make a portrait of the Queen. 776 00:47:18.930 --> 00:47:22.280 And in 2016, they commissioned me to do it 777 00:47:22.280 --> 00:47:25.300 and I was invited to the palace 778 00:47:25.300 --> 00:47:28.270 to make a portrait of the Queen. 779 00:47:28.270 --> 00:47:32.810 And this was an incredible experience 780 00:47:32.810 --> 00:47:37.430 because I suppose this was the first time 781 00:47:37.430 --> 00:47:40.630 an Irish man had been invited 782 00:47:40.630 --> 00:47:42.603 to make a portrait of the Queen. 783 00:47:45.140 --> 00:47:48.690 So I was making an Irish painting of the Queen, 784 00:47:48.690 --> 00:47:50.930 which from a political point of view 785 00:47:50.930 --> 00:47:54.003 was a pretty huge thing. 786 00:47:55.420 --> 00:48:00.280 The Queen asked me beforehand what I would like her to wear. 787 00:48:00.280 --> 00:48:02.060 And if I'd said I want you to wear the crown 788 00:48:02.060 --> 00:48:04.910 and I want you to wear the robes, she would've done that. 789 00:48:06.316 --> 00:48:08.270 But I said, no, I would like to 790 00:48:08.270 --> 00:48:11.540 leave it to the Queen to decide what she wears. 791 00:48:11.540 --> 00:48:15.150 And in fact, she wore a green 792 00:48:15.150 --> 00:48:17.293 or a turquoise green day dress. 793 00:48:18.890 --> 00:48:21.190 There's no trappings of the crown here at all. 794 00:48:22.309 --> 00:48:26.480 And I think she was very aware of the enormity 795 00:48:26.480 --> 00:48:30.873 of an Irish painting of her, if that makes sense. 796 00:48:32.810 --> 00:48:37.810 Again, all of the exploration 797 00:48:38.160 --> 00:48:42.830 of what paint can do at that scale goes into this 798 00:48:42.830 --> 00:48:44.603 in the same way as everything else. 799 00:48:47.090 --> 00:48:51.630 And once again, just a lovely humanity about the sitter, 800 00:48:52.728 --> 00:48:55.027 not about her as a... 801 00:48:56.056 --> 00:48:56.889 Yeah. 802 00:48:56.889 --> 00:48:57.722 I mean, I saw that. 803 00:48:57.722 --> 00:49:00.750 A famous, uber powerful person, but yeah. 804 00:49:00.750 --> 00:49:01.730 I saw that. 805 00:49:01.730 --> 00:49:04.653 I saw a woman who had just turned 90 years old. 806 00:49:13.599 --> 00:49:14.820 That I had the great privilege 807 00:49:14.820 --> 00:49:17.293 of spending a couple of hours with. 808 00:49:20.150 --> 00:49:24.084 But you paint what you see and you paint what you feel. 809 00:49:24.084 --> 00:49:26.240 And I think it's very important for me 810 00:49:26.240 --> 00:49:30.103 in the type of work that I make that I don't contrive that. 811 00:49:31.860 --> 00:49:35.460 I don't ever set out of course to be unkind, 812 00:49:35.460 --> 00:49:40.460 but I don't also set out to flatter as well. 813 00:49:43.275 --> 00:49:45.475 I try to be as honest as I can with my work. 814 00:49:46.400 --> 00:49:48.550 This is another Irish painting 815 00:49:48.550 --> 00:49:52.240 of an international politician. 816 00:49:52.240 --> 00:49:54.890 This is President Bill Clinton. 817 00:49:54.890 --> 00:49:57.510 And he sat for me in New York 818 00:49:59.160 --> 00:50:04.160 and he had a big input in the Irish piece process. 819 00:50:05.930 --> 00:50:10.930 And that was why I wanted to paint him. 820 00:50:13.800 --> 00:50:18.300 But this is him as we were talking about back home here. 821 00:50:18.300 --> 00:50:21.390 He became very moved about the loss in this place 822 00:50:22.806 --> 00:50:25.290 and about the thousands of people, 823 00:50:25.290 --> 00:50:28.190 the tens of thousands of people who were living with loss. 824 00:50:29.430 --> 00:50:32.790 So that's the painting that I decided to make of him. 825 00:50:32.790 --> 00:50:36.310 Very much an Irish painting of him again, 826 00:50:36.310 --> 00:50:38.023 and he recognised that. 827 00:50:39.693 --> 00:50:44.343 And speaking about the work that he did here, 828 00:50:46.234 --> 00:50:47.740 I want to go back to 1998 829 00:50:47.740 --> 00:50:51.290 and in the middle is Senator. George Mitchell, 830 00:50:51.290 --> 00:50:55.023 who was Clinton's envoy here. 831 00:50:56.053 --> 00:51:00.350 He helped broker the Good Friday Agreement, 832 00:51:00.350 --> 00:51:02.460 that happened in 1998. 833 00:51:02.460 --> 00:51:05.820 The Irish (indistinct) on the left 834 00:51:05.820 --> 00:51:09.073 and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair on the right. 835 00:51:10.580 --> 00:51:15.580 And I felt that back on reading 836 00:51:15.690 --> 00:51:17.660 the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, 837 00:51:17.660 --> 00:51:19.463 which I voted yes for, 838 00:51:20.390 --> 00:51:21.760 I thought, look, this is gonna be 839 00:51:21.760 --> 00:51:23.243 pretty good for most of us. 840 00:51:24.171 --> 00:51:25.820 This is gonna be a fresh start. 841 00:51:25.820 --> 00:51:28.360 This is gonna be the beginning of hope. 842 00:51:28.360 --> 00:51:32.440 But there's nothing in it for the people who suffered loss. 843 00:51:32.440 --> 00:51:34.120 There's nothing in it for the victims 844 00:51:34.120 --> 00:51:36.143 and survivors in this place. 845 00:51:37.310 --> 00:51:42.310 So whenever I started to make 846 00:51:42.430 --> 00:51:44.930 the head paintings in 2010, the portraits, 847 00:51:44.930 --> 00:51:47.190 I realised that I might have found the vehicle 848 00:51:47.190 --> 00:51:51.490 through which as an artist to explore that thing 849 00:51:51.490 --> 00:51:54.830 or to express how I felt. 850 00:51:54.830 --> 00:51:59.140 And my simple idea was to make paintings of people 851 00:51:59.140 --> 00:52:01.283 who were living here now, 852 00:52:02.730 --> 00:52:07.730 but who were daily carrying the weight of personal loss 853 00:52:07.820 --> 00:52:11.563 through the conflict here, the troubles here. 854 00:52:13.340 --> 00:52:16.820 So Silent Testimony was born. 855 00:52:16.820 --> 00:52:21.010 This is an exhibition of 18 portrait paintings 856 00:52:21.010 --> 00:52:26.010 of people who suffered loss through the dark days here, 857 00:52:26.030 --> 00:52:29.630 the troubles between 1969 858 00:52:29.630 --> 00:52:32.060 and the Good Friday agreement in 1968 859 00:52:32.060 --> 00:52:34.213 and even beyond that. 860 00:52:37.100 --> 00:52:39.313 Changed my life making this work. 861 00:52:42.894 --> 00:52:46.033 We take somebody like Johnny Proctor. 862 00:52:48.077 --> 00:52:50.560 Johnny only ever got to meet his father once 863 00:52:51.730 --> 00:52:55.173 because the day that he was born, 864 00:52:56.020 --> 00:52:58.940 his father was visiting the hospital, 865 00:52:58.940 --> 00:53:02.710 and whenever he left the hospital, 866 00:53:02.710 --> 00:53:05.470 gunmen were waiting for him 867 00:53:05.470 --> 00:53:09.070 and shot him dead in the hospital car park. 868 00:53:09.070 --> 00:53:14.070 And this is Johnny as he is now or as he was in 2015, 869 00:53:14.280 --> 00:53:15.310 whenever I made the work, 870 00:53:15.310 --> 00:53:17.200 but it's very much about now, 871 00:53:17.200 --> 00:53:18.583 it's not about the past. 872 00:53:20.090 --> 00:53:21.210 And these were the stories 873 00:53:21.210 --> 00:53:23.433 that I was encountering throughout. 874 00:53:25.391 --> 00:53:29.970 I wrote little inserts that just 875 00:53:31.410 --> 00:53:35.883 told basically the story of why the person was painted. 876 00:53:40.090 --> 00:53:45.090 Leaving out words like protestant, catholic, IRA, UVF, SAS. 877 00:53:49.770 --> 00:53:51.330 This was raw human loss. 878 00:53:51.330 --> 00:53:54.600 This wasn't protestant loss or catholic loss. 879 00:53:54.600 --> 00:53:59.600 Margaret Yeman here was working in an estate agent shop 880 00:54:01.860 --> 00:54:05.873 in a market town called Banbridge, 881 00:54:07.610 --> 00:54:12.610 and a no warning bomb went off and she was blinded. 882 00:54:13.680 --> 00:54:15.850 She's permanently blind. 883 00:54:15.850 --> 00:54:19.260 She had 100 stitches in her face from the glass. 884 00:54:19.260 --> 00:54:21.760 Still to this day gets fragments of glass 885 00:54:21.760 --> 00:54:23.663 coming out through her face. 886 00:54:26.946 --> 00:54:30.423 These were the stories that I was hearing. 887 00:54:31.940 --> 00:54:34.520 Virtue Dixon's daughter, Ruth 888 00:54:38.142 --> 00:54:43.142 was killed on her birthday whenever the pub that she was in, 889 00:54:43.360 --> 00:54:44.450 the bar that she was in 890 00:54:44.450 --> 00:54:46.793 to celebrate her birthday was bombed. 891 00:54:48.636 --> 00:54:50.840 And the roof collapsed. 892 00:54:50.840 --> 00:54:52.763 The DJ was playing a record. 893 00:54:54.070 --> 00:54:57.863 The DJ was playing happy birthday for her. 894 00:54:59.184 --> 00:55:00.017 And she was up on the dance floor 895 00:55:00.017 --> 00:55:02.840 whenever the bomb exploded. 896 00:55:02.840 --> 00:55:06.329 And again, Virtue's had to carry that weight 897 00:55:06.329 --> 00:55:08.043 throughout her entire life. 898 00:55:10.280 --> 00:55:14.350 Moving on then, nearing the end. 899 00:55:16.016 --> 00:55:18.753 I mean, obviously, to be honest with you, Jo, 900 00:55:20.100 --> 00:55:22.490 I could make a whole talk and frequently have done 901 00:55:22.490 --> 00:55:24.883 just on the silent testimony work. 902 00:55:26.280 --> 00:55:27.550 So much to explore. 903 00:55:27.550 --> 00:55:29.143 There's so much to unpack. 904 00:55:32.010 --> 00:55:32.980 We've toured it. 905 00:55:32.980 --> 00:55:35.199 We've toured it to the... 906 00:55:35.199 --> 00:55:38.490 We were invited to show it at the UN in New York. 907 00:55:38.490 --> 00:55:39.950 We showed it there. 908 00:55:39.950 --> 00:55:43.120 It's been in Paris, in England. 909 00:55:43.120 --> 00:55:44.503 It's been in Ireland. 910 00:55:45.730 --> 00:55:46.600 And indeed, we're open 911 00:55:46.600 --> 00:55:50.850 to just touring that exhibition worldwide 912 00:55:50.850 --> 00:55:55.850 because it tells the story of all conflict 913 00:55:56.803 --> 00:56:00.583 and the fallout of conflict, whatever we... 914 00:56:00.583 --> 00:56:01.820 I mean, we look at the obvious conflict 915 00:56:01.820 --> 00:56:05.080 that's happening in the world now. 916 00:56:05.080 --> 00:56:07.993 And day by day on the news, 917 00:56:11.680 --> 00:56:16.680 we're creating more people daily, 918 00:56:17.160 --> 00:56:21.987 just like the people I painted, and Silent Testimony. 919 00:56:23.680 --> 00:56:25.460 And whenever the war comes to an end, 920 00:56:25.460 --> 00:56:27.090 we don't know how that's going to happen 921 00:56:27.090 --> 00:56:32.073 or when it is going to happen, but it inevitably will. 922 00:56:33.620 --> 00:56:38.030 There's going to be hundreds of thousands, if not more 923 00:56:38.970 --> 00:56:41.160 people just like Virtue 924 00:56:42.710 --> 00:56:44.550 left to pick up the pieces on their own 925 00:56:44.550 --> 00:56:46.050 and deal with the loss 926 00:56:47.650 --> 00:56:50.873 of somebody having killed their loved one. 927 00:56:55.080 --> 00:57:00.080 This is a self portrait that I made. 928 00:57:01.060 --> 00:57:02.410 This was around about 2018. 929 00:57:06.098 --> 00:57:11.098 And this is the only portrait you'll see so far 930 00:57:11.300 --> 00:57:15.710 where the sitter is looking straight eyed at us. 931 00:57:15.710 --> 00:57:19.280 Obviously I needed that because I used a mirror 932 00:57:20.320 --> 00:57:23.420 and I didn't want a system of mirrors set up. 933 00:57:23.420 --> 00:57:25.573 I wanted just to be engaging myself. 934 00:57:29.230 --> 00:57:30.080 This is in the collection 935 00:57:30.080 --> 00:57:32.453 of the National Gallery of Ireland. 936 00:57:40.820 --> 00:57:45.820 To turn the tables on myself and to study myself 937 00:57:48.110 --> 00:57:51.763 was a rather daunting experience, I have to say. 938 00:57:52.830 --> 00:57:54.810 Because I was doing that quarrying. 939 00:57:54.810 --> 00:57:59.323 I was doing that putting away the facade on myself. 940 00:58:01.563 --> 00:58:05.293 And since then, I suppose I've been... 941 00:58:07.227 --> 00:58:08.060 I did a couple of paintings 942 00:58:08.060 --> 00:58:10.987 where the sitters are looking straight eyed at us as well. 943 00:58:10.987 --> 00:58:13.820 This is the Irish musician, Christy Moore. 944 00:58:13.820 --> 00:58:17.153 And again, he's engaging directly with us. 945 00:58:18.030 --> 00:58:20.990 And I suppose since that self portrait, 946 00:58:20.990 --> 00:58:23.730 I've been comfortable with making paintings 947 00:58:23.730 --> 00:58:28.730 of people looking straight eyed at us and engaging, 948 00:58:28.900 --> 00:58:32.112 and also being comfortable with 949 00:58:32.112 --> 00:58:36.600 increasing or decreasing the size of paintings too. 950 00:58:36.600 --> 00:58:39.940 I don't want to be too fixed, 951 00:58:39.940 --> 00:58:44.940 but you know, this painting was from 2012. 952 00:58:49.390 --> 00:58:51.850 Again, you can see that same 953 00:58:51.850 --> 00:58:54.900 expiration of landscape in the face 954 00:58:54.900 --> 00:58:58.363 and the window in the eyes. 955 00:58:59.240 --> 00:59:04.240 And I suppose what I'm doing with this 956 00:59:04.550 --> 00:59:06.983 is I'm looking at a human being. 957 00:59:08.970 --> 00:59:10.810 You see a lot of other portrait paintings, 958 00:59:10.810 --> 00:59:12.390 and indeed you'll be very aware of them 959 00:59:12.390 --> 00:59:17.203 where the whole face has been treated in the same way, 960 00:59:18.787 --> 00:59:20.800 or the eyes are painted the same way 961 00:59:20.800 --> 00:59:23.620 as the flesh is painted the same way as the background. 962 00:59:23.620 --> 00:59:28.079 And what I wanted to do here was just paint, 963 00:59:28.079 --> 00:59:32.733 and this is with all of the portraits. 964 00:59:33.770 --> 00:59:36.030 Paint a person, paint the human being 965 00:59:36.930 --> 00:59:38.633 as we engage with them. 966 00:59:39.860 --> 00:59:41.870 We don't engage with the tip of their ear, 967 00:59:41.870 --> 00:59:46.870 we don't engage with the point of their nose. 968 00:59:47.340 --> 00:59:48.933 We engage with their eyes. 969 00:59:50.430 --> 00:59:53.130 And everything else sort of blurs around the eyes 970 00:59:53.130 --> 00:59:55.103 whenever we're engaging and talking. 971 00:59:56.030 --> 00:59:59.683 And that's how I chose to paint humans. 972 01:00:01.300 --> 01:00:02.870 And that's how maybe in these paintings, 973 01:00:02.870 --> 01:00:05.463 we're able to feel a sense of attachment, 974 01:00:06.490 --> 01:00:07.920 possibly a little bit more 975 01:00:07.920 --> 01:00:12.920 because we're engaging with the sitter in that same way. 976 01:00:17.327 --> 01:00:19.690 This is something very new. 977 01:00:19.690 --> 01:00:22.180 This is something I did this year. 978 01:00:22.180 --> 01:00:26.153 And this is a self-portrait, 979 01:00:27.000 --> 01:00:31.083 but it's what I call a three dimensional painting. 980 01:00:31.950 --> 01:00:36.070 It's where I'm harnessing the three-dimensional 981 01:00:36.070 --> 01:00:39.530 quality of paint that I was using before. 982 01:00:39.530 --> 01:00:42.440 You can see the three dimensional quality of paint here 983 01:00:42.440 --> 01:00:47.210 where actually the texture of the paint is built up. 984 01:00:47.210 --> 01:00:48.120 And what I was doing was 985 01:00:48.120 --> 01:00:49.980 I was building it up to such an extent 986 01:00:49.980 --> 01:00:54.640 where I was using it as a medium to sculpt with. 987 01:00:54.640 --> 01:00:56.530 Now, there is a 3D printed, 988 01:00:56.530 --> 01:01:00.730 basic canvas, I suppose, beneath it, 989 01:01:00.730 --> 01:01:03.991 but the main sculptural aspect of it 990 01:01:03.991 --> 01:01:08.991 is very much built up. 991 01:01:09.000 --> 01:01:12.433 That's the scale of it in a cardboard box. 992 01:01:14.330 --> 01:01:19.180 And this is just a little film showing you, 993 01:01:19.180 --> 01:01:22.093 as you walk around the painting, 994 01:01:23.727 --> 01:01:28.540 notice I'm still calling it a painting. 995 01:01:28.540 --> 01:01:29.950 Yes. 996 01:01:29.950 --> 01:01:31.980 It's not a sculpture. 997 01:01:31.980 --> 01:01:36.080 It's in a box as a wall hanging. 998 01:01:36.080 --> 01:01:38.650 And it's deliberately meant to... 999 01:01:40.172 --> 01:01:41.005 It's deliberately meant 1000 01:01:41.005 --> 01:01:45.010 to be hung on the wall as a painting. 1001 01:01:45.010 --> 01:01:47.780 I revisited an old sitter of mine. 1002 01:01:47.780 --> 01:01:50.944 This is Glen Hansard again, 1003 01:01:50.944 --> 01:01:54.860 and this is again a 3D painting, 1004 01:01:54.860 --> 01:01:57.723 which I've just finished of him. 1005 01:01:59.264 --> 01:02:01.720 And again, this gives you an idea 1006 01:02:01.720 --> 01:02:06.320 as to the textural quality of the paint 1007 01:02:06.320 --> 01:02:10.413 and how it forms the sculpture. 1008 01:02:11.880 --> 01:02:12.760 And at the same time, you know, 1009 01:02:12.760 --> 01:02:15.110 very, very sort of strong relationship 1010 01:02:15.110 --> 01:02:18.680 in terms of the expression 1011 01:02:18.680 --> 01:02:20.900 and your handling of the paint 1012 01:02:20.900 --> 01:02:23.840 that really sort of relates right back 1013 01:02:23.840 --> 01:02:26.400 to the very first slides that you were showing us, 1014 01:02:26.400 --> 01:02:28.764 the picture of Belfast that you made as a young man. 1015 01:02:28.764 --> 01:02:30.112 Absolutely. 1016 01:02:30.112 --> 01:02:31.250 Completely. 1017 01:02:31.250 --> 01:02:33.290 There is a thread that can be drawn 1018 01:02:33.290 --> 01:02:35.113 the whole way through here, Jo. 1019 01:02:36.235 --> 01:02:38.480 And then just to move on to my last slide, 1020 01:02:38.480 --> 01:02:41.130 this is one that I'm working on at the minute, 1021 01:02:41.130 --> 01:02:44.270 and it's just a friend of mine from here. 1022 01:02:44.270 --> 01:02:48.830 She's originally from Uganda, 1023 01:02:48.830 --> 01:02:53.411 but asked her, I just felt, I would love to paint her. 1024 01:02:53.411 --> 01:02:55.440 I think these three dimensional paintings 1025 01:02:55.440 --> 01:02:58.523 are gonna be paintings of people who I just know, 1026 01:02:58.523 --> 01:03:00.873 they're not gonna be people who are well known. 1027 01:03:02.440 --> 01:03:03.810 And I just love that idea. 1028 01:03:03.810 --> 01:03:06.560 So, I'm gonna finish now, 1029 01:03:06.560 --> 01:03:10.420 but I suppose, hopefully 1030 01:03:11.271 --> 01:03:16.271 the slides show that I would give you next year 1031 01:03:16.960 --> 01:03:18.360 would be different from this 1032 01:03:18.360 --> 01:03:20.730 because it'll again, 1033 01:03:20.730 --> 01:03:22.630 the work that I'm gonna do this coming year, 1034 01:03:22.630 --> 01:03:24.600 which I don't know what it's gonna be, 1035 01:03:24.600 --> 01:03:26.820 and I don't know what directions I'm gonna be led in, 1036 01:03:26.820 --> 01:03:28.793 I don't know who I'm gonna meet, 1037 01:03:28.793 --> 01:03:33.793 and that's the whole exciting part of this career, you know? 1038 01:03:34.330 --> 01:03:37.560 So, Jo, thank you for listening 1039 01:03:37.560 --> 01:03:40.350 and thank you to everybody else out there 1040 01:03:40.350 --> 01:03:43.390 who has listened to me as well. 1041 01:03:43.390 --> 01:03:45.664 Oh, it's been wonderful to chat, Colin 1042 01:03:45.664 --> 01:03:47.130 and to learn more about your work. 1043 01:03:47.130 --> 01:03:49.350 And I mean, just really fascinating. 1044 01:03:49.350 --> 01:03:51.220 I was reading a quote, actually, 1045 01:03:51.220 --> 01:03:53.440 that Bill Clinton said about your portrait of him 1046 01:03:53.440 --> 01:03:57.300 and him saying that you managed to show a side of him 1047 01:03:57.300 --> 01:03:58.133 or an aspect of him 1048 01:03:58.133 --> 01:04:01.480 that he's normally very, very conscious of keeping hidden, 1049 01:04:01.480 --> 01:04:03.610 he doesn't want people to know that he's questioning 1050 01:04:03.610 --> 01:04:07.800 or that he's doubtful or that he's vulnerable in any way. 1051 01:04:07.800 --> 01:04:10.130 And I think in the context of this exhibition, 1052 01:04:10.130 --> 01:04:12.250 you sort of get a little bit of that 1053 01:04:12.250 --> 01:04:13.950 from Ed Sheeran as well. 1054 01:04:13.950 --> 01:04:16.490 And to think that he's on the wall 1055 01:04:16.490 --> 01:04:19.150 in this section of the exhibition that deals with fame, 1056 01:04:19.150 --> 01:04:22.330 alongside people like William Shakespeare and Charles Darwin 1057 01:04:22.330 --> 01:04:26.070 and all of these incredible names from history, 1058 01:04:26.070 --> 01:04:31.070 yet it works so beautifully because he's among portraits 1059 01:04:31.200 --> 01:04:34.490 of these incredibly famous people, 1060 01:04:34.490 --> 01:04:37.730 but showing a side of him 1061 01:04:37.730 --> 01:04:39.420 and you have shown a side of him 1062 01:04:39.420 --> 01:04:42.620 that is so unexpected and so unaccustomed 1063 01:04:42.620 --> 01:04:45.360 to what it is that we expect of images 1064 01:04:45.360 --> 01:04:46.640 of these sorts of figures 1065 01:04:46.640 --> 01:04:50.480 that it's just such a wonderful inclusion in the exhibition 1066 01:04:50.480 --> 01:04:53.900 and you've given us a whole new appreciation 1067 01:04:53.900 --> 01:04:55.080 of the portrait of Ed 1068 01:04:55.080 --> 01:04:58.520 and we're so lucky to have been able to speak to you. 1069 01:04:58.520 --> 01:05:00.680 So thank you so much, Colin. 1070 01:05:00.680 --> 01:05:01.520 Thank you, Jo, 1071 01:05:01.520 --> 01:05:04.470 and it's a privilege to have the painting with you as well.