Delighted to have won this award for the best small portrait at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition 2025 with a tiny portrait,
‘Ezra aged six and three quarters’ oil on a gesso panel 26 x 20.5 cm
The difficulty with children is their remaining still enough for long enough to make some decisions in paint.
It becomes an act of faith, that with persistence and the memorising of each shape or colour in the moment of noticing, some small thing can be added to the picture during these brief encounters. In this way, a painted study finally takes shape and approaches the depiction I had hoped for; to suggest in paint, something of that radiating life force, that wonder and resilience of the young child.
