Painting: If Not Here Then Where

This portrait of my partner completed in July 2021 and entitled ‘If Not Here Then Where’ is a deeply personal one that aims to capture a time when we were not sure if our location was the right one (we’re still not sure). We’ve spent years looking for other places to be the ‘right’ place to live, but have decided to content ourselves for the moment. It’s an ongoing issue. This is set in our dining room against the table that was the centre of our home.

In the dimly lit background top left you can see a packaged painting. This was my first major competition success that was selected for the Scottish Portrait Awards waiting to be sent to Edinburgh.

This currently hangs in our house and was a very important painting for me in terms of both the personal theme and the development of style. I managed to produce a looser finish with this one while also including black line work. I’m influenced by comic book art and have been working towards a style that reflects this alongside my fine art background.

In terms of technique, you can see how this painting was built up in the image below. I spent a long time doing a ‘dead’ painting layer for this one and then painting almost opaquely on top.