More portraiture... photography, copyright, composition

This blog is finally catching up with the portraits I have done but not shared. I am just getting back into painting and drawing again after my summer of pain. Shoulder and arm and knee pain have reduced to acceptable levels - now I only have my ankle and foot to deal with. X rays on Tuesday to see if there’s a break. So here is Nadezhda Krupskaya a recent portrait I have done. she was a leading player in the Russian Revolution and was at one time Chair of the Russian communist party- as well as being the wife of Lenin.

So here she is. Or rather here is a painting of her. Or rather here is a painting of her using an old black and white photo of her I found on the net. Or rather here is a photo of my painting of her. So which is the art? The photo of the painting? The painting itself? The original photo? Hmm.

Here’s my 10 pence worth: the original photo was not a piece of art. It was a photo taken for official purposes and not meant as a piece of art. Even so I would argue that it does have some artistic value as an original piece of creativity.  The photo of the painting isn’t art - it’s a digital reproduction of a painting- which is the art.  I may be wrong but I don’t think this is controversial. 






Below is a photo I took last year in the National Portrait Gallery in London:

A portrait of Harold Wilson by Ruskin Spear . A great piece of art, a great painting. I love it. Is my photograph of the painting art? Of course not. No one could say that. It’s a photo of a piece of art. Yes?












 I don’t think that’s controversial. No here’s another photo I took, this time in Barcelona:

Is my photo art?  Or just a photo of someone else’s creativity? There is at least one photographer selling his photos of other people’s graffiti. Hmmm. I know of another one who likes recording graffiti everywhere in homage to the graffiti and the graffiti artist. He doesn’t sell his photos, he just shows them on Instagram. He does it because he likes doing it. He has even less followers than I do and just does it for fun. He doesn’t think he is creating art, he thinks he’s recording art. I agree. Somehow photographing other people’s creativity doesn’t feel like art to me. It’s clear to me that there’s a difference between creativity and recording. And the fact that one person does it on their mobile phone and the other does it on a fancy SLR camera doesn’t make any difference. To me selling your photography of other people’s artwork without giving any credit or royalties is tantamount to plagiarism. So here’s one more photograph:

It’s a portrait I did of my dad, Dannie Abse, several years ago. Today would have been is 96th birthday

Portraits Pain and Mobile apps

Well to start with I have downloaded a mobile app to encourage myself to do more on this blog. I tried this once before and it didn’t work but hopefully this app will be better.

Secondly (in reverse order in case you hadn’t realised) I have had a painful summer. First my knees went- I have put on so much weight and my arthritic knees couldn’t take it. Injections of artificial cartilage eventually cured this. But then the return of tennis elbow after four years crippled my arm and this unsurprisingly spread back to my shoulder. Aaargh. And I won’t even mention my sprained ankle. Oh ok I will.

Before all that I managed to carry on with my portraits series. 

Above is Elaine Brown- former Black Panther leader. She was for a while chair of the Panthers and their education officer. To this day she’s still a political activist and should for Senate in 2008 for the Green Party.

The painting above is of Welsh Socialist, reformer and a founder of the cooperative movement Robert Owen. I painted this alla prima - wet on wet. I think I need more practice with this technique, it’s hard but in many ways more rewarding- more accidents- more intense. It  is so different to adding glazes, layer over layer. Generally I find myself somewhere in the middle of this!

Last but not least:

I am really doing something wrong if you don’t recognise Fidel Castro above, and if you have no idea who he is- READ!!

Back soon with some other recent paintings.