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Keir McGuinness 691 x 400 pixels, 39 Kb
Glad Day 539 x 400 pixels, 36 Kb
Keir McGuinness 540 x 400 pixels, 30 Kb
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I decided to make him into his own calendar of shifting fortunes and emotional metamorphoses. We postponed the formal beginning of the picture until January and I made one painting each month thereafter, each taking two sittings (four hours painting time, no more no less) for the whole year. It was and exciting and nicely risky task and, though I enjoy painting to rule, it was difficult to believe that his health and business commitments would allow work to proceed without a hitch. Apart from one squeezed month when sittings were only a day or two apart all went well and we were home and dry by Christmas Eve. Since the paintings log the painter's progress as much as the sitter's seasons and cycles they present a cryptic parallel both to the series of drawings I had made of the months of the year and to the lithographs Pella on Saturdays (it was indeed always on a Saturday that Keir would sit). Those studies of Keir that were made before the year of portraits (since they were of the same format) were made into another variation by cutting each in half along the vertical axis and pairing each half with that of another to make a variant set of four panels. The halves match up quite well and the resulting 'split personalities' had an eerie quality. The first study of all was so gloomy that I called it 'Glad Day' and it exists as does one other (the last to be done) independently. The Portrait Works (1989), p. 46-48.
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