Flying Down to Rio

Vargas or 'Varga' was the most famous pin-up artist of all time. I came across him in the 60s when I found piles of  Esquire magazines in my uncle's library dating back to the war years. The Varga gatefold was to my teenage eyes the only memorable part of the magazine. Esquire magazine was distributed...

Balnea Vina Venus

Balnea Vina Venus 2005 What is it that makes a painting more or less erotic? The subject? The pose? The beauty of the sitter? Surely all three but there are other  important elements as well. The  “Tepidarium” by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, painted in 1881, is made up of a number of elements that  would...

Daphne

Daphne 1995 In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Apollo, the god of music and poetry, was afflicted by an infatuation for the beautiful nymph Daphne. He pursued her relentlessly until, unable to escape his clutches, she was transformed into a laurel tree by the river god Peneus in order to save her from capture. A popular subject during and...

Fascisca

Fascisca 2005 This is the second photograph I have done based on Ingres’ Grande Odalisque (the other is Casalisca). Ingres is one of those artists who can give a certain comfort to artists who have passed middle age as several of his most famous works were painted towards the end of long life. The Turkish...

Plume Fatale

Plume Fatale 2009 -  based on Chloe by Jules Lefebvre (1875) The painting Chloe, which could be the most famous artwork in Australia, hangs not in a gallery or private collection but, unusually for a work of art, in a Melbourne pub, Young and Jackson's. The Parisian model, Marie, committed suicide after a tragic love affair...

More Lentils, Less Lust

More Lentils, Less Lust 2009 Lautrec was an enthusiastic frequenter of brothels, as were most of his contemporaries, so nothing unusual there; but he painted the women and occasionally their clients. He seems to have had a faiblesse for redheads. No academic nudes these. Henri was not an attractive man: too much in-breeding in the aristocracy and a...

Flaunting her Wares

Flaunting Her Wares  2005 What was the attraction in big women for Fellini? It wasn't that he disliked thin ones - far from it! Yet most of his films have room for an over sized Junonic actress: Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita and the unforgettable, matronly tobacconist who overwhelms the young Fellini in Amarcord...

Galét

Galét 2005 For a small country Belgium has produced a lot of notable artists, Félicien Rops is not one of the best known, but he was extraordinarily popular and respected in Paris by many of the most famous artists and writers of his age. A Symbolist, he painted women who are not the  polite salon...

Casalisca

Casalisca 1989 Casalisca based on Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque The second of the series after the Corday. I had had in mind the idea of interpreting the Ingres’ Grande Odalisque  for some time and I had even done a version with the same set, but the first model was not right. Then in 1989 a girl...

Homage to Corday

Homage to  Charlotte Corday 1988 This photo, the first of the series was a response to a competition organised by an arty Café in Bologna. The model Soraya who bore a certain similarity to Marat in the original, was the first in a long line of willing, patient and extraordinary, ordinary women who have modelled...

Klimtomania

Klimtomania 2006 based on Gustav Klimt's Judith, I & II Klimt painted two versions of the bloody biblical story of the slaying of Holofernes by the Jewish patriot Judith, the second he painted after his visit to Ravenna where the Byzantine gold mosaics had a profound affect on his technique. In both versions Judith holds...

Dragon

 Dragon 2011 I have an affinity with dragons. An ancestor of mine, John Somerville, slew a dragon in Linton in Scotland in the 12th century. I am an 'Old Dragon' having been to the Dragon school in Oxford  and where my grandfather  taught for many years. I was born in 1952, in the year of...