Over the past couple of years, I’ve been, I’ve done a few portrait commissions, not many. I’ve always liked painting heads. But I’ve always painted just the people I felt like painting, for myself. But there seems to be such a shortage of portrait painters that people are looking for a bit of new blood, and a lot of the people who do portrait commissions in Australia are getting very old and unable to cope much anymore, and they’ve done so many, people are a bit sick of them. And let’s face it, most of them are very boring paintings. So, I’ve taken on the challenge and I think eventually I’ll be able to do reasonable portrait commissions. I can do a workmanlike job now, but I seem to be a little bit inhibited, scared to let myself go, because of having to please the people who commission them.
With the portrait commissions, I often do sketches, I usually do some sketches beforehand and then work on the actual painting on the spot. I don’t like working from sketches or from photos, I like to have the person there. And it’s most extraordinary what happens. I swear people’s faces change right in front of your eyes. Colour – even the colours change – or maybe I’m changing and seeing it differently, but it’s most extraordinary. I always paint them on their territory, I don’t bring them around to my studio, because they’re more relaxed on their territory and they feel more confident.
