Portrait of Richard Demarco

I N T R O

I made this portrait of Richard Demarco over the winter of 2017 to 2018, working from a series of charcoal studies drawn from life at the Demarco Archives in Summerhall, Edinburgh. Richard is an artist, teacher and arts impresario, a co-founder of the Traverse Theatre, the figure who first brought Joseph Beuys to Scotland, and a lifelong champion of the Edinburgh Festival’s founding ideal that the arts might help to heal a post-war Europe through cultural dialogue. I have known him since 1999, when I began working on the archives and assisting with his Festival exhibitions.

The sittings at Summerhall were a pleasure, Richard being an artist himself and generous with his time, though the work was interrupted in 2017 when he suffered a stroke. I set it aside until I had visited him, and resumed in the new year. From the outset I wanted more than a likeness. I hoped to gather something of the ideas that run through Richard’s life and work: his concept of the Road to Meikle Seggie, his collaborations with artists such as Beuys, Abramović, Kantor and Neagu, and above all his belief that the artist’s task is to witness and communicate truth, and that art can open a dialogue with the power to heal the wounds of war.

The final painting was made in gesso against a blackboard backdrop on wood.

S K E T C H E S A N D P A I N T I N G