01 of 08

Painting portraits had never appealed to me until one year when walking around the National Portrait Award exhibition my son bet I couldn’t paint well enough to get into the next show. Peeked by this challenge I painted Lazarus Awakes, which, even though it got into the award competition, he still didn’t rate as on a par with the other contestants. However, the exercise had enabled me to understand the great pleasure of spending time with another person as the subject. Since then I have set aside a period each year to paint a friend, often in the guise of a mythic biblical figure.

The combination of long conversations and the exploration of a biblical character has made portraiture a hugely enjoyable part of my life. It certainly draws on a different range of responses and observation than any other area of my work.