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Portrait of Cathie Curran |
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The portrait came about through an accident. Cathie had seen the portrait I painted of my wife Jane as ‘ A long distance runner’ in the Ghosts of the Academy exhibition at the Redfern Gallery 1973. Cathie asked if I would paint a portrait of her daughter Connie. I was not confident about such a project so I tried to say no by saying that I would rather paint a portrait of her. Cathie liked the idea, which surprised me. I was hoisted on my own petard. In the event I thought that the difficulty would be in making the portrait a painting that might be interesting as a work even if you did not know the subject. I made studies from measurements I made of the structure Cathie’s face which I wanted to form the basis of the composition. The idea being that every aspect of the painting would be a portrait. I have always found ‘Whistler’s Mother’ amusing as a painting and as a title so I used this work as the basis for my own. The carpet on which Cathie is sitting is a design based on the proportion of her face. The blackboard on the wall has a drawing based on the most perfect of the organisations that I found from my measurements. The drawing is only barely visible in this reproduction.
The original measurement drawing and some of the works that I made from it that I gave to Cathie to complete the work.
[ click on images to enlarge ]
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