ENGLANDS

This work was a 'significant birthday' present, for James England, of his four girls on their respective ponies. Usually, I manage to avoid doing human faces as much as possible, as it's an entirely different genre to animal portraiture, and not one I'm particularly comfortable with! The chosen photos, however, left me no option but to woman up and crack on with it. Clearly, being related, there are family resemblances between the girls, so that both confused and helped, in equal measure!

As ever, there's complications involved in creating a surprise present, and with this one I had to get permission from the original photographers to use their images to work from, it being impossible for me to take my own of them on horseback, or competing. So big thanks to Adrian Sinclair for allowing me to work from his photos. I also have permission from another photographer, but I can't remember the company name, so if they chance to see this, I'm more than happy to credit them!

There's a difficulty in doing a compilation piece, trying to make individual photos sync together, in size, colours and shape, especially as all decisions have to be made at the very beginning, and can't be changed once part way through, unless I face the heartbreaking scenario of restarting from scratch, which has been known!

For this piece to balance and keep the eye in the picture, I 'mirrored' one of the photographs. It's tricky ensuring one image doesn't dominate, and I feel comfortable I've achieved that.  Also, I am extremely proud of my tweed jackets!

As ever, I'm very flattered to have been entrusted with such a special commission.


Pastel on Ingres paper  60cm x 45cm, unframed size.



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