This theme / series reused two old collage portraits James.
There were two of them. I did them at my first Sturt Summer School in 2004 (I think). The teacher was David Fairbairn, and while i had a dreadful time with his (lack of) teaching skills and his self-centred story telling, his one big piece of advice “Go Bigger” worked quite well.
There were two of them, one red and one blue. Mostly done from Donna Hay Magazines (she always had great colours). Each was about 120 x 90 cm. I used photographs taken on a weekend away when I first started painting, using Pat’s borrowed digital camera.
Over the twenty something years since then they have mostly been rolled up in my attic, and it wasn’t appropriate to have them on my walls once we were no longer married (and it hadn’t been appropriate to have them on my walls when we WERE married, so go figure).
Making the portraits was an interesting exercise. It has been an excruciating series to work on!
I don’t know if it’s the emotional stress of it, or because I’m doing a lot of social stuff right now and not getting to the art. I certainly wanted to make it be meaningful, but also wanted to play with forms and such.
I have made these works from it:
