Tag Archives: portrait painting

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 14

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Above: First of June. Forest of Luffness 10. Oil on 12×12″″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025.

Today I updated yesterday’s painting of Richard Demarco, and as usual I’m not at all sure I shoudn’t have left it! Still, it does actually loo more like Richard, and it did need a bit more grounding – so I added legs, hint of the chair etc, but quite sketchy.

In the upcoming documentary, we”ll be interviewing Richard about some of his past work – exploring dialogue between war-torn countries and the healing presence of art.

Back when I worked with Richard as an assistant archivist and curator, Richard was working with Mercy Corp on an exhibition called Beyond Conflict, whch explored the negative impact 9/11 had had on a western view of Muslims.

We’ll be discussing that exhibition in the upcoming doc’ and we’ll be exploring the role of faith in art – does it change what we seek to express, or what we look for in others’ artworks?

Some more views of today’s finished painting.

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 13

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Above: (Painting in progress) First of June. Forest of Luffness 10. Oil on 12×12″″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025.

I’m working on the hands and the rest of the background tomorrow (the easy part!) you can see pencil outlines.

Clickable images and details below –

Working on a close up portrait of Richard Demarco today for the Luffness series.

This is fairly small again at 12×12″ canvas. I took a still from film footage of our day at Luffness, from which I’m painting this portrait.

There were nine of us there that day last year, including little baby Atlas, but when I carefully look back through all the footage Manuel sent me (Manuel Pennuto is the documentary maker of the Luffness project) the person really paying attention is f course Richard and Terry.

It’s why I asked he and Terry Newman if they’d like to visit the friary ruins at Luffness.

I’d write more about that but it’s 9pm and I’m puggled! There’s nothing more complex than painting the human face – that is, if you truly want to capture expression, hence feeling tired. It’s a good thing I now have a painting lamp so I can paint all hours, but my back isn’t thanking me!

I feel I could create three portraits showing sight, hearing, touch and soul – the idea of (as D.H Lawrence put it) wholly attending.

More tomorrow …

Forest of Luffness, painting progress 5

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Above and directly below: First of June. Luffness 2. Oil on 12 x 12 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2024

This is the second smaller work in a series exploring a day in June among the ruins of a Carmelite Friary. If you follow this blog you’ll know I’ve been exploring this theme from the start of the year and it’s been an interesting time…

Because I share a bit about my own creative process, it’s all hanging out there for everyone to observe how difficult it is to find the right way to approach a complicated subject!

I began with the idea of exploring a war-traumatised psyche – a dreamlike series exploring archetypal and abstract imagery. It produced these paintings below, quite different from my usual approach. It didn’t come easily but it was interesting as creative exploration.

This was followed by an attempt to depict the atmosphere of the small forest at Luffness, and the strangely affecting presence of an aged effigy depicting a 12th century crusader – almost worn to nothing. Mostly I was just trying to loosen up and find a way forward through a complicated subject – I’m an instinctive painter and although my mind is constantly active, I just can’t paint from a strategic cerebral perspective because my thoughts are rarely conclusive.

It was at this stage that a few people questioned the themes of my work, which brought me to a temporary grinding halt – a good thing since it made me think more deeply about the themes and where I stand regarding subjects such as faith, Christianity and war.

That experience was followed by a day which has now become the title of this series: The first of June in Luffness. There’s no way to summarise that day because so many aspects of it are ongoing parts of life. There’s no conclusion to my relationships to family and friends, the exploration of faith and spirituality, the exploration of art, or the response to violence and war. There’s just the fact that these things exist, ongoing.

I remember back in art college, when we were being taught about post-modernism, we were told that nothing is real, all is subjective. At the time, a good friend said ‘but suffering is real’, meaning that is surely something we can all agree on – an objective truth even though suffering has degrees of difference. How we respond to that is the question. Maybe one of the most useful books for me in recent years has been C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man – all about the concept of objectivity. It’s not an argument for religion or Christianity, it’s a philosophical work which looks at the concept of objectivity and ethics in cultures worldwide. Is there such a thing as a set of objective ideals we all understand to be true?

I’ve always liked Beckett’s lines:

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

I won’t pander to louts is the upshot of all this! Anyway, in these latest paintings I think I’ve found a way to explore the themes. More on this later.

Forest of Luffness, painting progress 4

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Above: Detail from a panting in progress – The First of June. Luffness

As you can see below there are several versions of this little painting. It’s oil on 10×10″ canvas and I’m sticking to this small size until I’m satisfied with my approach. Paint is just too expensive to waste on larger sizes until I know where I’m going.

I find the figure of Richard Demarco easier to paint. Painting myself is proving a challenge though! It’s partly because I don’t have space to get into detail and the fact that I don’t want to paint in detail.

I began with a straightforward depiction, but it doesn’t express what I’m interested in – it doesn’t express the light, or the feeling of being there.

So the next day I started again with a looser approach. Intriguiningly, this oddly Da Vinci-esque angelic figure appeared. I liked it – it didn’t matter that it doesn’t look like me – but inevitably I began to tamper with it and it was lost, sadly!

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Today I started again and, though it’s maybe not easy to see in these quick photos below – there’s far more atmosphere, light and expression. I’m happy with the depiction of Richard, but again, not so much with the figure of me. It’s not that I want an exact likeness, it’s more that I want an impression of light more than detail, because that day was a lot to do with incredible light.

Talking of lights. Thanks to a birthday gift from Adam I’ve been both blessed and cursed with the gift of a ‘daylight light’ which means I can carry on painting into the dark hours of winter. Given I’ve only stopped now at 11pm, I’ll have to keep an eye on my hours!

More soon …

Portrait of Richard Demarco … preparing.

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I posted a few weeks ago about a portrait I’m working on of Richard Demarco (previous post Here )

Having made some preliminary sketches (some of these below and right), I’m taking time to develop ideas in imagination before making a final work which will be on a 30×30″ wood panel. Also to look at the work of some favourite portrait artists, including Auerbach (more on that below).

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve made hundreds of portraits over the years in the form of sketches, probably only three or four finished paintings though, and for this portrait there’s so much to consider. Despite Richard’s connection to the world of avant garde and mold-breaking art, I don’t plan to make it a strongly conceptual work since that’s not my usual mode these days, so it will be more about expressing my understanding through line, composition, background and so on.

The themes I keep returning to are ideas about layering, also emerging. The reason being that this reflects my understanding of Richard’s character, work and life, but it also lends itself to my usual style of painting which involves layering, scraping back and building texture. I also know that it will be monochrome, or with very little colour.

For the moment though, I don’t want to say anything about what those layering and emerging ideas will be, for the simple reason that if I’m worth my salt as an artist, those ideas will be evident or discoverable by viewers when the painting is complete! (That will be in December after I’ve completed the Winter Series)

In the meantime, I’ve also been looking at portraits, my favourites being those by Frank Auerbach. I’ve included a short video of an interview with Auerbach below (far better than me havering on about him!) He comes across here as fairly modest – likeable. In his mid 80’s now, he’s still painting  …

On the left is ‘Head of E.O.W. IV’ by Auerbach, which is in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, what you can’t possibly see in reproduction here is the deep, sculptural layering of paint (though you see his paint technique clearly in the video) – the portrait changes as you change viewpoint – some people don’t even recognise it as a face.

On the right is ‘Head of Leon Kossoff’, from a private collection. (Kossoff was a friend and fellow artist). Video below paintings …