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Rovay Gallery, The Life of a Portrait, March 2021
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Portrait of Sigi with Line Image Inspired by Daughter Jaz

122cm (W) x 122cm (H)
acrylic on canvas

$ 0.00

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Subject:
Sigrid Thornton Portrait
Selected for the Portia Geach Memorial Award 2002, and exhibited at S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney the same year.

At the first sitting for this portrait, Sigrid’s daughter (then 10 years old) joined her mother to watch the process.  I gave Jaz a sketchbook and pencils and suggested she draw as well.  In my mind, I had Sigrid’s green eyes as a possible focus but to my surprise, I loved the sketch that Jaz drew so much, that I asked her permission to include it somehow in the portrait.  I was amazed by the ambiguous result and the new visual connection it created around a newly formed and subtle but iconic ‘nimbus’ (a halo surrounding a supernatural being). At the time I became fascinated by the sub-culture of stencil graffiti. Rennie Ellis documented some of the earliest examples of stencil art to appear in Sydney and Melbourne in his book ‘The All-New Australian Graffiti 1985. This influence became evident with textural elements creating a new illusion of depth in this portrait.