I never seem to manage to make the Private Views I am invited to, despite Art being my life and my work I am too busy dealing with it to look at it, but I finally made it to the National Portrait Gallery yesterday to see the annual Portrait Award Exhibition.
I thought it better than the previous two years: fewer photo-realistic portraits and a bit more imagination. What have I got against photo-realism? Well, I just don’t see the point of producing a painting which is slavishly identical to the real thing; nor do I see the point of a portrait that may as well be a photograph.
A photo-realistic portrait is more about the artist than the sitter. it demonstrates their amazing skills and handling of technique and don’t get me wrong I greatly admire that, but it rarely captures more than the likeness of the sitter. For me a great portrait is one that as well as capturing the likeness – to differing degress – it also tells me something about the sitter or their life. Perhaps it narrates a moment, perhaps it references things I already know about the sitter or indeed don’t know; if it can impart something about both the artist and the sitter then I am really impressed and engaged.
So I was relieved to see fewer photo-realistic portraits this year and a move towards paintings that engage me in the way I have described. Do I agree with the judges choices this year (I rarely do)? Well, Clara Drummond’s Girl in a Liberty Dress is a good choice for first prize (though there were others that would have done as well) it outshines the second and third prizes. While I admire Bo Wang’s subject (his grandmother dying) and his amazing skills, and Benjamin Sullivan’s portrait of poet Hugo Williams is charming if a little wooden, Clara has captured beauty, contemplation and history all in one painting.
So what would my choice have been if I were a judge? Régis by Christopher Therrien literally called to me from across the room. I have no idea if the artist intended to reference Christ in his agonies on The Cross but I certainly built that narrative in my head and the sheer power of the painting is amazing. Laura in Black by Joshua LaRock is a classical portrait that has touches of Sargent and Delacroix but the quality that grabbed my attention was the obvious passion that exists between the artist husband and sitter wife.
Tad by John Borowicz is a charming and simple portrait of a the artist’s son with a paper bag on his head. The simplicity is exactly what makes it possible to look and keep looking and appreciate the careful compostion, the little character that fills the canvas and his relationship to the world.
Stanley on a Painter’s Rag by Keith Robinson would without doubt have been my choice for the top prize. A beautifully rendered portrait of the artist’s son painted onto a cotton sheet that had been used to clean brushes. Artists are always looking for new ways to present work: new angles to impress, but I sense Robinson was doing more that this and was probably marrying up two things he loves with this painting. The same way a child loves its favourite blanket, artists tend to have a favourite rag and to paint onto that rag a special portrait seems fitting. But leaving my art historian’s over analysis aside for a moment – its the sheer beauty of this painting that really reaches to me, that and the look on Stanley’s face that says so much.
Ecclestone Art Reviews 