The Painter

1 Apr

Gordy (AKA GRC AKA Gordon Rohan Carmichael) is a longtime friend who we dont see often enough.

When I first met him he was painting circular abstract art that reminds me of looking into the eye of some magical mythical beast. Since then his style has morphed into something Hieronymus Bosch would be delighted with where he creates scene from inkblots with paint (paint blots?) and transforms them over hours of loving detailed work into their final forms.

Each of the figurines have a metallic luminance that changes the canvas depending on the light and time of day.

He used to work in a space between his kitchen and bedroom. Just enough to fit an canvas in and have the morning light fall onto it, using that crazy beautiful colour to help him play with colours as the day starts and evolve each of the parts.

For his portrait we captured GRC in his studio, I used a series of gels to give the image a morning feeling, a spray of pink and blue colour that mornings sometimes have (unless its pissing down)

I love these ones because GRC is such a calm presence. There is no pretence or other story in the image, just Gordon, calm and creating and beautiful.

The 2nd set of images we used my glass window to create the painted look I love. Being a painter this was a no brainer and maybe a little obvious but I still like how they turned out. Him caught in a picture frame in a frame of glass .Again even with a distorted image his presence comes through calm as always.

The final image was a play on his previous works with the circular canvas paintings. I cut out a white foam-core board into a large circle and used that against the highly textured backdrop. Framing him in a sort of holy nimbus. I played around with this image for a long time in colour before settling on a black and white treatment. The colours were distracting and took away from the multiple textures that layered up formed the image.