2022 – 2023
I know we are all strapped for time, especially now but I thought I should send my news at least once a year. Hope you can wade through it all!
Click on any of the images above for a link to the Portrait archive pages of my website
Here are some of my portrait projects of 2022…some are of close friends and some, like the hairy girl Antoinetta Gonzales, are special commissions…all are beautiful stories, which is why I love to paint people. Those conversations in the studio, one on one, are some of the most intimate of exchanges and inform every brush stoke. A portrait is not just a likeness it is also a mirror. As with life we are drawn to the dream of unity with the mirror of our souls. If we lean into the meniscus that separates us from ourselves we may, from time to time, glimpse the divine.
December 2023…King Charles and Queen Camilla have personally asked me to paint the official Coronation State Portrait of Queen Camilla for the Royal Collection.
I am surprised but excited at the prospect of recording this singular moment in history.
I will be starting this enormous painting in December and aim to have it finished by April, 2024. The painting will be hung in the State Rooms of Buckingham Palace.
October, 2023… I have donated a painting to the auction at Sotherby’s for the charity ‘Freedom from Torture’, supporting people who have survived torture and offering sanctuary for hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers, rebuilding their lives in the UK.
Artists include Anthony Gormley, Grayson Perry, Ai Wei Wei, Mona Hatoum, Kiki Smith and me.
October, 2023… Installing my composite, 3/4 size silver leaf giclee print ‘Speaking in Tongues’ at the truly amazing, newly restored venue and club Koko’s in Camden.
This place has got to be the most well-appointed ‘musos’ hang out anywhere.
Special thanks to Nick Quinby and Mikei Hall for the experienced install and Katie Heller for curating this space…and Olly Bengough for believing in the vision and Violletta for her support.
The friends that modelled for this painting are from left to right – Richard Strange, James Ribbans, Nicolas Quinby, Levi Ducran, Viktor Wynd, Jon Spiteri, Nitin Sawhney, Johnny Dewe Matthews, Uri Fruchtmann, Adam Fuss and Nick Laird Clowes
June, 2023…
‘Tree of Ghosts’ final mastering at the legendary Metropolis studios.
Album launch in the new year, 2024 at Koko’s in Camden…date to be announced.
Royal Academy Summer Show, 2023…Varnishing Day at the RA summer exhibition…astonished to find my painting Grenfell Tower ‘ The Sleep of Reason’ hanging in an exceptional room amongst exceptional works by RA’s. Thanks to Royal academicians Tim Shaw and David Remfry for believing in the work and the message.
Proceeds will go to the Grenfell Foundation.
Grenfell Tower – ‘The Sleep of Reason’ – 2017, oil and carbonised cladding on canvas
I lived and worked in the vicinity of Grenfell Tower and was deeply affected by the catastrophic fire that destroyed so many people’s lives. I felt compelled to do something that could possibly remain as a memorial to the victims. I started work on this a few days after the tragedy. The point of view being from the garden of a friend, a neighbouring property directly under Grenfell Tower.
During the night of the fire, the burning and carbonised cladding had fallen from the tower into the garden. I collected this material and back in the studio ground it into an oil medium to make the paint used to create this work. Hence, this painting is not only of Grenfell Tower but made of it as well. It is both a representation and a manifestation.
It was conceived as a monument and a lament; The catastrophic dysfunction around Grenfell Tower fire disaster remains to this day, a grim testament to the lack of connection between institutions that bear responsibility for the disaster and residents that suffer the consequences…and this work memorialises the mostly unrecognised and overlooked immigrant communities that live among us.
February, 2023…
Alexander the Great through the dreams of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. A staged reading of an epic poem by Stamatis Filippoulis at the British Library with my art direction and projections, directed by Elizabeth Filippouli.
January, 2023…Some stills from the installation of my film ‘Requiem’ at Dorfold Hall, Cheshire.
Digitally augmented painting with a specially composed work by the maestro that is Nitin Sawhney. I feel that his internal musical world and my internal visual world connect on a very deep level.
Curated by Zuleka Gallery and Flora Fairbairn
