In March of 1994, according to my sketchbook at the time, I had the idea of doing a picture of “several Amandas, 2-4“. I’m afraid that’s all I have as far as preliminary work goes. The painting I dug out of my plan chest a month ago was made according to my very primitive practice at the time, on a stretched piece of brown packing paper, primed with white household emulsion. I cannot recommend this to anyone. At least buy actual cartridge paper and prime it with acrylic gesso, I know from when I gave my parents a double portrait of my sister’s wedding, that the brown paper and emulsion approach leads to bits of the painting crumbling away. My parents, bless them, put in the effort to get the wedding painting properly framed and it was quite a task for the framer!
Grim, isn’t it? Twenty-six years later, I am shuffling through the contents of my plan chest for older stuff I can cut up and use in a collage. I found this and posted it on Facebook as an example of a horror picture. I particularly detested the muddy palette, though believe me, I also noticed the oddly diagonal distortion of the right hand version’s face. Weirdly enough, some people liked it. And I began to see things in it that I appreciated. I liked the blue dress with red circles, a pregnancy number I had made from Ankara Wax fabric from Brixton. The shapes and the wood of the dresser. Our stack of colourful bowls and David’s cast-iron teapot on the top. Even the yellow background.
And I thought, things have changed so much, haven’t they? I avoided acrylics in the 90s because they were not all that pleasant to use and they left a strange plasticcy surface (unsurprisingly). Now I was following a new teacher, Tracy Verdugo (among others) who had pointed out that acrylic in tubes had been joined by acrylic inks and fluid acrylic in zingy, clear tones and with a matt finish, should I so wish it. I thought, I can do better by this 31 year old, gazing at herself.
I took a tracing of the figures and the merest outline of the dresser.
I decided to reverse the portraits because, after all, I had been looking in a mirror. I’m not sure that was right because the dresser contents were still the same as they are now but we have moved countries since. Anyway, having impressed the outline onto a fresh piece of paper bought from Seawhite around 20 years ago (yes, I had a really long break from art), I set off, being true to my love of lots of clean colour and my delight in the new paint. In this case I used quite a bit of fluid acrylics from Golden.
This slider shows the painting’s progress (in varying lighting, apologies!). I mostly painted this upright on the easel, which I don’t always manage. I suppose this indicates that I wasn’t using any runny media (or I didn’t mind runs!). If you look closely, you’ll see that I changed my mind about which cupboard held glass and which held china halfway through.
It was so freeing to be able to paint the figures and the china just as I thought best for the painting. After all, 31 year old Amanda is no longer available. So while I used the old spectacles, I changed the colour of the dress so it popped a bit more. I also chose my prettiest china, whether it actually lives in the cupboard or not. Do you see the Russian doll peeping out? She exists but normally sits elsewhere.