Introducing a new series…

Begun more than year ago with Glenn Gould, I have been revisiting this series, with the intention of focussing on women composers then and now.

I’m merging painted portraits of iconic musicians with visual translations of the music that defined them: layered bands of colour drawn from their own works, or from pieces they interpreted with devotion. But more than that, I'm exploring them: their eccentricities, their tenderness, their conflicts. From Glenn Gould's nocturnal solitude to Clara Schumann's quiet strength in the shadows of love and legacy. So many women composers and performers of real stature were overlooked in their own time — talked over, credited to their husbands, or simply left out of the record.

The painted stripes become a kind of veil across the portrait, echoing that history. These women were so often kept half-hidden, standing just behind the men beside them.

This new body of work will be painted entirely by hand in oils, where the earlier digital studies were built on screen. Something changes when a portrait passes through the hand rather than vectors on a screen. In this case, I am after the imperfect, and the raw touch as opposed to the high precision accuracy of line and colour. It feels like the more honest way to bring these women back into view.

This is music, colour, and the human heart.