2011 PORTRAITS

I have been asked many times to undertake portrait commissions and have
always refused. Then I recognised a compelling connection between a
long-standing theme of my work – the way advertising and entertainment
media shape a contemporary sense of self – and the traditional role of the
'public' portrait. I became intrigued by the idea that I could create a reductive
but still identifiable 'idealisation' of a subject which, like fashion advertising
or celebrity portrait photography, might transform their real-world 'self' into
an emotive 'product'. As large-scale, gleaming, sexy, and super-real as a
good fashion or lifestyle advertisement should be – none would be less than
'life size' – these portraits might also be unsettling and revelatory, even to
their sitters.