Earning my living as a painter, having brought up a family that way, delights me. That happens to maybe a score-few at most.
Although I enjoy good abstract pictures, I always wanted to be a figurative painter: the actual situation in front of me can move me. I don’t copy it, but I explore the thing seen. Figurative art is sometimes sneered at by commentators on painting.
This means that I have never been in fashion, though I am in demand, having a list of commissions stretching ahead for as long as I would want it.
The Queen didn’t seem annoyed that I had rather taken control of the situation, but when two minutes later there was yet another knock at the door, I really exploded
I spend most of my time on portraiture. Not necessarily painting famous people, because many ordinary folk sit for portraits too. I do work on landscape also, but my timetable is really filled with people: and portraits are far more difficult than landscape painting.
Since everyone is different in character and personality, I am never bored with commissions. I find them difficult though, really quite often starting again because I think I can do better.
Rich lay-people, anxious to show that they are modern in outlook, sometimes pay colossal sums for celebrated pictures. I think that perhaps they are too easily pleased. Hearing of a hundred million being paid for a famous painter’s work is unsettling: but an aircraft carrier costs much the same, so there is poetic justice here.
I would regret it if a garden fence collapses, but all the same be moved to paint that accelerating swirl as it settles, noting a rhythm picking up in the tree-branches behind and in the line of hills beyond. Painting it, one opens laypeople’s eyes to the design dormant there.
Painting the Queen
Rembrandt produced a wonderful picture of a flayed ox. He didn’t expect to exhibit the ox, just his picture of it: nor would he have shown a pickled shark.
Van Gogh painted his bedroom. Now, they display a bed itself. There is a link here, so there is a related situation: but a vital element, the artist’s painting, has gone.
Much emphasis is now on images produced by machines. They can of course be seductive, with wonderful colour and rhythm – but there is no real exploration, and they are easily done.
"Oh, for goodness’ sake" I said, throwing my brushes down dramatically on the palette, "who is it?"
My most challenging undertaking, up to then, was in 1972 when I was commissioned to paint seven members of the royal family, with the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of London, holding separate sittings in six places. Tricky!
I had to measure everyone involved for height and eye and shoulder levels, making individual studies so I could work with stand-ins to relate them rightly in space.
Normally, when one paints the Queen, a bottle of Malvern Still Mineral Water and two glasses on a silver tray are in the Yellow Drawing Room, ready beforehand.
Once, they were not there. "Curses!" I thought, but the Queen came in and the session started. Sittings are never normally interrupted; so when there was a tap at the door, I was cross.
Forgetting that it was not my palace, I called out irritated, "Oh, come in!" A servant with the tray and glasses and the mineral water entered, and I told him to put them on a table.
The Queen didn’t seem annoyed that I had rather taken control of the situation, but when two minutes later there was yet another knock at the door, I really exploded.
"Oh, for goodness’ sake" I said, throwing my brushes down dramatically on the palette, "who is it?"
The door opened, and looking very apologetic the intruder said, "Look, I’m awfully sorry, but could I just have a word with the Queen please?" It was the Prince Of Wales.
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