The Multifarious Influences of The Irrational Portrait Gallery

I’ve been thinking for a while now (say, about 12 years) how best to proceed with my Irrational Portrait Gallery project. This grew from a visit I made to an exhibition called Egyptian Funeral Portraits at the British Museum in 1997. The pictures on display were similar to the slightly bug-eyed images I’d been producing since my sojourn in Venezuela in the early 90s, which in turn had been influenced by South American folk art. These subsequently went through a West of Ireland Folk Art Filter plus a few shavings of inspiration from African barber shop signs and my ongoing preoccupation with orthodox icons and the world of mystic gold. These disparate art traditions had various things in common, one of which was a decidedly non-academic approach to portrait painting. Another was vivid colour as if painted while under the influence of poteen/aguardiente/whatever it was that Egyptian artists from 1st century AD drank. There was more life in those ancient portraits of dead people than many of the people currently walking and stalking the grey streets of London. For many years I have had a plan to start producing pictures of footballers in the icon tradition. They are, after all, the sort of people we worship nowadays. At the time I was obsessed with doing a painting of Roy Keane. This was while he was at the height of his playing powers – late 1990s. I never did the painting. It might work now, but only as a retrospective piece. However, I have at last got myself organised enough to bring out a selection of prints of my favourite footballers, using both acrylic knife/finger/brush painting and digital wang-eyed scratchy illustration. The first batch are Rivelino, George Best, Diego Maradona and Peter Lorimer. Some of the players to come will be more obscure, because they are personal favourites.

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