Avant-Garde: May 2019

Wednesday 15 May 2019

Laura (artist: †Seán Manchester)

Laura painted my portrait back in the 1980s. Unquestionably the best portrait of me, I felt the time had come to return the compliment, albeit in part. Marilyn Monroe was the subject of her Bachelor of Arts Degree Graduation Show at the Sir John Cass School of Art, Whitechapel. She has painted Marilyn many times with her work featuring in galleries and private collections. I could not get past the importance of Marilyn in her life. Thus the famous Hollywood actress subsumes Laura in my painting.

Wednesday 8 May 2019

Keith Maclean (artist: †Seán Manchester)

I was introduced to Keith Maclean by Elżbieta Wojdyla (mentioned in a 1975 contribution I made to an anthology, and a book published ten years later outlining supernatural disturbances at Highgate Cemetery). This was a time when the ethos of the Sixties was still evident at the turn of the Seventies. In my book, probably owing to his surname, he is referred to as "a young man of Scottish descent,"despite his proclaimed Welsh connections and quintessential Englishness. The last time he appeared (Christmas 2018) the tartan trousers he wore indicated my original deduction was close.

This is my fifth and final portrait of Keith Maclean. It benefits from my current stage as an expressionist artist and encapsulates the partially transparent subject in tripersona from April 1973, July 2017 and December 2018 when last he manifested in my home as a ghostly visitor. An anaemic moon hovers in the background in sad reflection of the more certain moon in the portrait I made of Elżbieta Wojdyla many moons prior. The intensity of the subject's gaze has increased with the passing of time. Yet there is still a trace of the moment atop Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath, 13 April 1973, lingering amidst the peaceful cerulean of an early evening sky that suggests something even higher. I employed colour gingerly. No tartan necessary. This is my ultimate portrait of him.