When I was very young, I spent a lot of time on ships due to my parents being, or my father rather, being posted from country to country. During this time on ships I did a great deal of portrait work, quick sketches of people, and I had rather a facility with likenesses and I found it great fun to, at a very early age, to capture likeness and for this thing to be shown around. It was more or less a feeling of being able to do something that other children couldn’t, at that time, that gave me the impetus, and, of course, naturally, the very fact that I travelled so much gave me the sort of the yen to be able to record some of this in sketchbook form.
I work mostly from life, although lately I have been working from quite a few drawings which I have collected from various trips up north. In one case I stayed in Broome, and I did quite a number of studies of Aboriginals lounging on benches which are supplied by the various stores on the verandahs, and I found that most interesting from the point of view of composition and so on. The studies of these people intrigue me.
In my portraits, I try and achieve a likeness which is naturally of great importance, although life is necessary also. If a portrait’s simply a likeness and nothing else, it lacks any interest to the viewer, although in this case I bring in the viewer, I mean also satisfaction to the artist himself. This is a very difficult thing to achieve in a portrait – that is a life. Now some sitters are definitely less interesting than others, so if a portrait is a failure in that way, it’s very likely that the sitter is partly to blame as well as the artist. When I say ‘blame’, I meant a thing again which they can’t help, it is simply the personality is not as strong, as say, in another person.
