Andrew Tift: Extended commentaries, May 2018 Exhibiting artist Andrew Tift wrote the following commentaries about the works in his exhibition. We have collated them here to share with visitors. A digital copy can be found on our website.
Gallery 2
Alan Garner OBE, 2010 Acrylic on canvas Grosvenor Museum, Chester This is a portrait that I made for the Grosvenor Museum in Chester. Alan Garner is a respected children’s fantasy writer. He lives in Alderley Edge in Cheshire in a cottage he brought in the 1950’s which is in the shadow of Jodrell Bank and very rarely leaves. He sits in his writing chair in his writing room surrounded by objects which reflect and reinforce his identity.
Ken Livingstone, 2014 Acrylic on canvas Lent by the National Portrait Gallery, London This was commissioned by the NPG. I had a series of sittings with him. Initially I thought that it would be set in his house but with a young family there was very little of himself in the house. He is a renowned gardener so we decided to set the picture in his back garden. I first saw it in winter when everything was dead and there seemed little promise but by summer, as he had promised it came to life. In a way it is a democratic “man of the people” kind of portrait in a normal back garden with compost bins and roof racks and satellite dish in a normal street, nothing too “showey”. His mother’s ashes were scattered at the base of the tree on the right and he wears his trademark cream suit and a tie from the successful Olympic bid for 2012.It took me 13 months to paint and is probably the most detailed portrait that I have ever made
The Rt Hon Tony Benn M.P., 1998 Acrylic on canvas On loan from the House of Commons This is a portrait of the veteran left wing Labour MP which I made for the Palace of Westminster. It is set in the basement of his house in Notting Hill which he used as his office. I’m interested in the way that objects reflect and reinforce a sitter’s identity so we spent a lot of time deciding what would make good narrative objects for the portrait. Many were already there but others we selected from around his house. I wanted it to be a relaxed portrait so he sits in his cardigan - (which had strips of cello tape on the inside to hold sections together) Doctor Martin shoes with odd laces and he sits in Kier Hardie’s chair. On the shelf are busts of Kier Hardie, Robbie Burns, Karl Marx, a miners strike plate, his late brothers RAF wings, Transport and General Workers Union trophybooks, diaries by him and his wife Caroline, a miners lamp, a quote from the bible which was his motto “Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to Stand Alone”, A bust of John Wesley and a miners bust. On the old Dansette record player is a William Morris Lamp, a tape recorder and his pipes. And under that is a cardboard box which he used as a rubbish bin. To the right is his ballot box, a vale of blood, a jar of North Sea oil, a mug of tea with red tape around it and a Mars bar.
Lord Carrington, 2014 Acrylic on canvas On loan from the House of Lords This portrait was commissioned by the House of Lords and features Lord Carrington in his ancestral home in Buckinghamshire. There are four short videos online to accompany this painting and give insight into the portrait.
Kitty (triptych), 2006 Acrylic on board The New Art Gallery Walsall Permanent Collection This is a portrait of Kitty Godley, daughter of Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman and first wife of the artist Lucian Freud and later Wynne Godley. This portrait won First Prize in the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery. I went to Kitty’s home in Cavendish for a sitting with her. It was quite chaotic with carpenters fixing doors, “meals on wheels” deliveries and cleaners around our feet with vacuum cleaners but when everything settled we talked for a long time and the triptych took on the form and feel of a conversation with lots of different expressions - at times absorbed or at other instances formulating thoughts with constantly changing physiognomy. It was also influenced by John Freeman’s 1960’s television interview series “Face to Face” where the camera psychologically scrutinised the subject in microscopic detail.
Kitty (Transition), 2006 Acrylic on board The New Art Gallery Walsall Permanent Collection This portrait was painted 60 years after Lucian Freud painted Kitty’s famous profile portrait which is in the collection of New Art Gallery, Walsall. It echoes completely the pose, size and scale of the original but reflects the passage of time.
Life is Sweet, 2018 Acrylic on canvas Previously I have met most of my non-commissioned sitters during chance encounters whilst walking or driving around the UK and abroad or in specific situations and environments that I put myself in. These days I find social media very useful for this too as it is a very “Portrait” driven medium. I met Laura through a friend of a friend on Facebook and asked her if she would sit for me. Understandably she was a little nervous and I liked the contrast of this with her very bold contemporary style.
Max, 2016 Acrylic on canvas Max was the first painting that I made in this series. Max is a scaffolder and a tattooist in Birmingham. I wanted to depict him as someone who has a great physical presence and an alternative “Outsider“ look. I’m interested in people who live outside the mainstream, on the fringes of society, often positioned there by their own self-image. I also wanted the portrait to be very quiet, still and reflective as the passages of light travel across his body. I work in black and white a lot because I think it breaks the image down to the barest essentials, an almost edited version of real life which for me gets to the core. I was also inspired by the Ingres painting The Bather of Valpincon where the female bather sits with her back to us and I imagined that if you saw Max in this pose from behind it would be similar.
Gallery 3
Chrysalis, 2016 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on archival board (diptych)
Sorrow (after Van Gogh), 2016 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on 300g paper
Ray came to my studio for a sitting and as we chatted he told me that he had this full body tattoo when his parents had died almost as a coping strategy. He felt that his mental health was fragile around this time and he was feeling torn apart inside. I asked Ray if he would adopt a “Chrysalis pose” because I wanted to explore the idea of metamorphosis and transformation from a chrysalis to a butterfly, as if he is breaking free from the chrysalis and with his full body tattoo emerging as a butterfly. It also reflects his fragile mental condition, being torn apart inside, a kind of separation into a new beginning. This piece was also inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s drawing “Sorrow” which is in the collection of The New Art Gallery, Walsall.
Max in Shadow, 2018 Acrylic on canvas This is quite an intense portrait of Max lit from below creating a dramatic shadow. It is almost tribal in feel with his tattoos and also echoes the German Expressionist film of 1922 Nosferatu. The background is a wash of black ink which has run on the easel and I think the juxtaposition of this looseness gives the detailed areas extra emphasis. This image was partly inspired by a self-portrait by Edvard Munch.
Peace, Love, Hope, Faith, (Ken Billingham), 2009 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on 300g paper Private Collection This is a drawing of Ken Billingham who I first met when I was doing my MA study into the deindustrialisation of the West Midlands steel industry in the early 1990’s. We kept in touch until he died in 2008. Ken worked on the furnace until he retired and was deeply religious and his faith was the backbone of his life. He didn’t have a lot but I found the simplicity of his life very profound and his faith brought complete meaning and contentment to his life. He was very animated when he spoke and sometimes he seemed to speak with his weathered, industry battered hands.
There’s no Substitute, 1993 Acrylic on board This is a portrait of my late grandparents in their terraced house in Bloxwich. The theme for the painting is about the natural life cycles of natural forms - conception, birth, life and death. Walter is cutting bruises out of his apple which takes on the appearance of a skull. Gladys had both of her legs amputated due to diabetes and there were often heavy artificial legs around the house which she rarely wore. The artificial fruit also eludes to the idea that no matter how technologically advanced we are we can’t compete with nature. I wanted a sense of “Oldness” in this portrait, old people set in an old and unmodernised house which had felt the presence of many years of a couples and a families life.
Memorial Painting, 1998 Acrylic on board (diptych) The New Art Gallery Walsall Permanent Collection This is a personal response to the death of my grandparents. It’s a conceptual painting about the way that objects and spaces can provoke memories. It is a diptych painting - on the left is the empty room with all of its possessions cleared out… there is a sense of absence and emptiness but also of presence of what once was. On the right are “still life” studies of some of the objects which used to be in the room. Each object conceals or provokes a story or a memory and reflects the way that these seemingly banal, everyday objects become evocative and precious when someone is gone. Even though there are no people in this painting I still see it very much as a portrait.
You know not the day nor the hour (Harry Coleman), 2001 Acrylic on canvas (diptych) Private Collection Harry was the last surviving First World War veteran in the West Midlands. He was from Bloxwich and by coincidence used to work on the same bench as my Grandad at Talbot Stead Tube Company in Green Lane, Walsall. It is a diptych portrait at life size scale. On the left is a painting of a photograph taken of him aged just 16 before he went over to Ypres and on the right is a portrait of him at 102 years old. Harry was at the Battle of Passchendaele towards the end of the war and got a “Blighty wound� when his finger was blown off. He came back to England for medical attention and by the time he had recovered the war was over and he always said that it saved his life. The title is a quote from the Bible. In each image he was close to death, he could easily have been killed in the trenches in 1918 but he went on to live until he was 102 years old so it is also a painting about the fragility of life and the part that luck and chance play. In this year (2018) the portrait also commemorates the centenary of the end of World War 1.
Betty, 2017 Acrylic on canvas Betty, used to be our old neighbour. Initially we had a cat which lived part of the time with Betty as cats often do. Then we got a dog, Max, and he chased the cat out of the house and the cat went to live full time with Betty. Through our relationship with the animals we grew very attached to Betty and she often used to come around our house for tea. She’d lived in the same house for most of her life and it was almost like going into a museum when you went in. Very little had been updated since the early 1970’s and I wanted to capture this in the portrait. The room is exactly as it was, nothing had been moved, because I wanted to make a completely objective interpretation and also quite simply to depict what a nice lady she was.
My Daughter, 2018 Acrylic on aluminium I wanted to make this picture of our daughter that was about the overwhelming “miracle” of creation and passing on life. A theme which is so big it is difficult to comprehend and absorb so I used portraiture to share my experience. I liked the way that her eyes are wide open looking out in to the world. I also wanted it to be unsentimental and objective which I feel adds to the realism.
My Mother, 2018 Acrylic on aluminium This is a portrait of my mother aged 82. It is a companion piece to my portrait of Scarlett “My Daughter” reflecting the youngest and oldest members of my family and the passage of time which separates them.
Woman with White Dog, 2007 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on 300g paper I made this portrait of my wife Anne in the context of a project surrounding Lucian Freud’s first wife Kitty Godley. Anne is from Wednesbury, as was Kitty originally, we both have white dogs (with a little black in this case) and both married artists and so I made this drawing, in the spirit of Freud and Kitty assuming the roles almost as if in impersonation.
The Bath, 2017 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on archival board Back in the early 90’s I went to see a Bonnard exhibition at Tate Britain. The final room of the show was devoted to his portraits of his wife in the bath which I thought were incredible and have always stayed with me. My wife, Anne, is a regular visitor to the gymnasium and always has a long relaxing soak in the bath when she gets back. I was interested in the idea that the act of bathing, a still body in water sometimes unexpectedly took on the appearance of death which prompted me to make this drawing. It is also inspired by the story of Ophelia in Hamlet and the painting of the same name by John Everett Millais.
Madonna and Child, 2016 Acrylic on canvas This is a portrait of Casi who I met through a friend of a friend. She’s a tattooist from Birmingham. In the painting she is in the early stages of pregnancy, hence the title and in the pose she is almost protecting her womb with her hands. It is a traditional theme in art history and it is also inspired by the great Ingres painting Madame Moitessier. Tattoo’s are so prevalent in society at the moment I’m also interested in why people want to make such permanent artworks and statements on their bodies and how they will feel about them in the future.
The Obscurity and Revelation of Andrew, 1994 Acrylic on board (diptych) Private Collection The theme for this painting is temporary changes in identity. In the first image everything is covered up and obscured and in the second image everything is uncovered and revealed. I was interested in the way we mask our identity so there are references to Batman with his mask half on and the idea is he Batman or Bruce Wayne and there is a leaflet with a block of flats being renovated with tarpaulin on and then taken off. The soap on my face also acts like a mask. I like the diptych format because it is very narrative and you can make comparisons and contrasts. The way we read a diptych is very different to the way we read a single image as our eyes flick from one image to the next. The title eludes to Religious themes and my pose is based on the painting of Christ by Piero Della Francesca in The Baptism with the exposed wire appearing almost as a halo.
22 Years Later, 2016 Acrylic on canvas (diptych) Lent by Roberto Polo Collection, Brussels 22 years ago I made a diptych painting called "The Obscurity and Revelation of Andrew". It was a self-portrait exploring ideas of temporary changes in identity in a domestic setting. In the first image everything is obscured as identity is masked and in the second everything is revealed. I like the way in which we read a diptych as your eye flicks from one image to the other making comparisons and contrasts and is completely different to a single image. Now, 22 years later, I have just completed a companion piece which relates directly to my life and experience. It is a meditation on the transition of time and addresses themes of natural life cycles and mortality. Birth - Life - Death...children being born, family and friends dying as I pass through these momentous personal experiences as daily life ticks along and I find myself in "middle age". When we talk about Portraiture we often talk about "Immortalising" somebody and I have always been very aware and conscious of the strong link between Portraiture and Mortality, life and death. "22 Years Later" echoes the theme of "Obscurity" with the background cloaked and fading into darkness and my face covered with a skull mask exploring the theme of life and death as the light fades out. Then, in the "Revelation" everything is illuminated, revealed and alive in the artist's studio with symbolic references to my own personal life experiences. I am an atheist but am enthralled by Christian symbolism and iconography and I wanted a spiritual dimension to the painting so I stand before the easel, a daily ritual over the past 30 years, with my hands clasped as if in prayer bathed in a divine light looking into beyond. I was also inspired by James Ensor's uniquely strange painting "The Skeleton Painter” and the peace and serenity of Piero Della Francesca’s “Baptism” which is echoed in both paintings. The themes of “natural life cycles and transition of time” are symbolised in the painting. The images of our daughter, Scarlett as a hospital scan and the first photograph taken of here at the birth together with her umbilical cord next to the photograph. There’s a soft toy on the shelf and a drawing she made of us walking in the woods on the wall. There are references to the passage of time with a depiction of a postcard of “The Obscurity and Revelation of Andrew”, taking it back 22 years, my watch and the mantle clock from our honeymoon
reflecting the passage of time and the cactus was given to me by my Grandad in 1990 and I have kept alive to this today and still has a visceral and tangible link to the past. In a sense I also see the pose of the figure, standing before a canvas – as a reflection of what I have spent the past 22 years doing on an almost daily basis as if in meditation. Then there are depictions and symbols of death, more obviously in the skull mask and the snuffed candles representing fading light. Depictions of my father and grandparents who have died together with the dried wheat in a jar which I collected on a beautiful summer’s day walk in a cornfield with my daughter. I have an almost constant flow of ideas for paintings and drawings and fill sketchbooks and scraps of paper with them and I find it difficult to “switch off”. I then have a constant battle to decipher and edit my way through the ideas to find out which are the good and which are the bad. This is reflected in the ides taped to the wall representing and almost metaphorical head space with ideas and thoughts floating around. The paint splattered apron is almost as if it were a butcher’s apron and there is an element of blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the painting.
Gallery 4
Can you promise never to repeat what I’m about to tell you…?, 2017 Acrylic on canvas This is a scene painting rather than a landscape. Quite a departure for me but something I have been thinking about for some time. It has quite a loaded title which forces you to place your own narrative on the painting. There is a feeling that perhaps something sinister has happened here but we don’t know what. It is painted in sepia which plays around with late 19th Century photography, as if it is almost caught up in time.
Tsukiji Fish Market, 1996 Acrylic on board Private Collection This is the biggest fish market in the world and in contrast to a lot of Tokyo’s modernism and Hi-tec it was a wonderfully Dickensian experience. Thousands of stalls create a ram shackled maze of cobblestone alleyways housed in a steel framed tin and corrugated plastic structure. A hive of activity with cylindrical diesel trucks speeding around and people running in all directions and none of the usual Japanese etiquette. I loved the variety of sea creatures with their sometimes “otherworldly” appearance. I focused on the people from one particular stall and I liked the “Punch and Judy” style accounts kiosk and the furtive fish monger in the foreground. The auctions started at 4:30 and when it was all over by around 10:00am the burned the fish boxes. I wanted to make a link with traditional Japanese art works and scrolls so the composition is an extended landscape.
The Body Shop, 1995 Acrylic on car door panel Private Collection I did a travel Award project in the mid 1990’s based in Japan. I visited the Nissan factories, initially in Sunderland UK and shortly afterwards in Tokyo where I made a body of work based on the cradle to grave work ethic of the Japanese car manufacturing industry. I stayed in the dormitories with the people who lived and worked at the factory and made a body of work. The Body Shop is based in the communal dormitory wash room and is painted on the door panel from a Nissan Primera with a plug in the key hole. It is also inspired by the Bather paintings by Ingres. The title relates to the cosmetics chain The Body Shop, but also The Body Shop in the factory where they press the panels and also the idea of car bodies and human bodies.
Doppelgangers series 2016-18 C-Type prints Lazarus, 2018 Watching Moths, 2017 Scarlett and the Snowman, 2018 Beach Hut, 2017 Ice Cream, 2017 Self Portrait, 2016 My Mother at the Garden Table, 2016 I think sometimes the most interesting ideas appear out of nowhere and that is how this series came about. I was making some Papier Mache heads with our daughter when the thought came into my head “ I wonder what these would look like if I collaged a portrait from a studio shoot onto them ?” So this photographic series came from something playful and unexpected. Some of them are funny and some appear sinister, they are very much light and dark. I liked the idea that a mask conceals the identity of person behind it and transforms them into someone or something different. In this case I’m masking the person’s identity with their own identity – (as it is always the same person underneath). I liked the idea of masking a person’s face with their own face and the strange surreal version which presented itself and then putting them in everyday situations and contexts which just seem to offset reality. I also liked the crudeness of the heads juxtaposed with the slickness of the camera.
Lea, 2016 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on 300g paper Alex, 2017 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on archival board Ekene, 2016 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on 300g paper Line and tone drawings I wanted these drawings to actually “look� like drawings and not like photographs. I think the half-finished looseness and freedom of the sketchy lines enhances and emphasises the realism of the tightly drawn faces. They are quite large drawings using charcoal, carbon, pencil, ink, dry brush and etching tool and I think when they are larger than life you scrutinise the face even more for greater detail, a kind of topography of the facial plane. I also like the point at which the tone and line collide creating a different surface quality.
Lee and Louis, 2018 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on 300g paper When I first saw photographer Lee I liked his contemporary style with beard, slick back hair and tattoos. He came round to my house for a sitting and brought his dog Louis with him which I immediately thought would work well in the composition. I like the way Lee holds Louis like a piece of camera equipment. I like my drawings to look like drawings and not photographs so some sections I leave as sketches to accentuate this point and create almost an unusual dual reality.
Terry (Drawing 1), 2017 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on archival board Lent by Andrew Tift Bandana, 2009 Acrylic on board Private Collection The Kavern Club The Kavern Club was started in 1965 in the basement of a building in Stafford Street, Walsall which I remember from my childhood as Horrocks Hobbies DIY shop but now sells second hand gear. It was essentially a youth club for motorcycle enthusiasts. The club has been kept going since and is now affiliated with the Wolverhampton branch of the Hells Angels and they have a new club house in Walsall. I first visited them in 2007 at the “Rising Sun” pub in Ablewell Street – (which has now reverted back to its original name “The Watering Trough”) and made a series of paintings and drawings of Bandana. On their 50th anniversary gathering at a pub in Rushall I met up with them again and developed this series of paintings and drawings. I later visited Terry at his house and made 3 portraits of him.
Terry, Kavern Club, 2016 Acrylic on canvas Andrew Tift I met Terry at the Kavern Motorcycle Club in Walsall and then later I went to his house where this portrait is set. I liked his biker image and alternative lifestyle, the badges on his waist coat and his nicotine stained beard. On closer inspection the flesh tones are almost Fauvist in parts where reds and greens and oranges and blues resonate together.
George, 2017 Acrylic on canvas Lent by Andrew Tift This is a painting of George, a member of the Kavern Motorcycle club. The scale is larger than life, probably just under twice life size. It’s a very still and quiet portrait reflecting a thoughtful and silent moment. I wanted to explore almost the topography of his face in extreme detail and piece together an objective likeness. It was in essence a microscopic exploration of human skin.
Noddy, 2017 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on archival board Lent by Andrew Tift Noddy always seemed like a perfect sitter for me with the Walsall connections and characterful face. I’m a huge music fan too so it was a great sitting because he recalled lots of stories and anecdotes from the old days.
Eric Sykes, 2011 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on 400g paper Lent by the National Portrait Gallery, London I made this portrait of Eric about ten months before he died. I very rarely do smiling portraits because they can feel forced or an unnatural expression for a prolonged portrait but in this case I felt that it worked as he was a comedian and laughter was his trade. There was also a comedy angle to the glasses too which were actually his hearing aid. It was a lovely sitting in his office just off Oxford Street and we chatted about the British comedy royalty that he had worked with in that space.
Max and Andy, 2008 Charcoal, graphite, carbon, ink, etching tool on 300g paper Private Collection We got Max in 2006 from a rescue centre. He was our first dog and I think only other dog lovers can understand the deep and profound bond between dogs and humans. This bond is what prompted this double portrait.