A Self-portrait painted directly onto my plein air palette which has travelled all over with me for the last few years.
It’s not about the art.
My young, anxious activist is inspired by the actions of Stop Oil who threw soup over a Van Gogh. At the time, there was as much backlash as there was support, for the moment that went viral. But is the pressing issue whether the gallery can clean the soup off the glass protecting the sunflowers or, what will we leave the next generation, and how will we get there?
N.B. This activist has obtained the artist’s permission for his actions.
ми не прощаємось (pronounced ‘my ne proshchayemosʹ) “We don’t say goodbye”
A portrait of a friend, a refugee who fled Ukraine. Whilst their town was being bombed she was alone with the cat and her husband was stranded on holiday. Five hundred days ago now, they separately made their way to Poland and asked a friend to extract their documents to Italy where they managed to go and retrieve them before taking refuge together 2,500km away in Switzerland. The mirror inexorably puts the viewer in the painting, and we can consider ourselves in her situation. A woman who has lost her home, had to leave an ageing grandmother in Ukraine and needs to start a new life, learn a new language. Hoping, but not knowing if she will ever go back home.