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This is Iain Clark, and em, showing here,
who I've known for, 30 years?
When I was art school, Iain was a young printer and printmaker
and we've known each other for a very long time
and it seemed a brilliant thing when Iain asked me to sit.
And now you have to talk.
Okay.
It's not a traditional portrait, it's not a traditional photograph,
because I don't really do either.
I consider myself an artist, I'm not a photographer.
I get branded a photographer because I use a camera.
I use a camera because I'm not a painter.
I can't paint and I can't draw
so a camera is a fantastic tool to use.
Now, you know, a lot of artists
use photographs and paint from photographs.
In a way I do the opposite.
I use photography and end up with something
that could be a painting, it could be a print, it's ambiguous
and that's kind of what I want to achieve really.
I want to get something that makes people look at it twice.
They walk up to it and they don't actually know what it is
and what I'm doing is I'm taking out a lot of the
ah kind of three dimensional side of it
and making it very planographic in a way.
I absolutely hate having my static image
captured in any shape or form.
I prefer to animate myself
so I distract people from how I actually look
by what I'm saying or what I'm doing.
So I was slightly resistant to this portrait
but wanted to do it because it was a friend,
it was an artist I admired,
and also it was a huge honour to even think that my portrait
would someday be in the building that I used to work in.
Em, but I do find it difficult,
because I'm quite shy,
and I don't like, em, how I look very much
so, those are all vanities that you have to overcome though
if you're taking part in something that's fine art.
It's not actually about me at all
and that's what you have to remember,
it's about something else.
I don't do portraits particularly to please the sitter,
I do portraits because, you know,
I'm thinking about what I'm looking at
but I'm also thinking about what the viewer is going to see
when they see them
and it is irrelevant really what the sitter thinks,
because actually... although, you want to please the sitter
you don't want to upset the sitters.
I have upset people with some of my portraits
but that's not my aim.
My aim is to produce something
that I think has got some kind of emotion
and some kind of honesty to it about that person.
The portrait of Brian *** that's also in the collection
came about because I've known Brian sort of for a few years
not terribly well, but he happened to drop in to visit me one day
and I took the opportunity
as I often do when people come to see me,
I ask them if they would mind me taking their portrait.
Now Brian had no idea what I was doing
but I took his portrait and I worked on it
and I got it to a stage where I was really pleased with it,
and he was back in Glasgow so I went to see him
and I showed him the portrait.
His reaction wasn't terribly positive towards it
because the first thing he said to me was,
he said, 'oh, my eyes are blue'.
Now in the portrait I did of him his eyes are actually brown
but that's nothing to do with what he looks like,
it's to do with the fact, the composition and the colours
that I used in the image.
But anyway, eventually it was unveiled here
and Brian came to the unveiling
and his sister who was there said to him,
'Brian, the portrait's got our father's eyes',
because it turned out that, ah, their father had these dark eyes
and so Brian's view of it completely changed at that point
and he was delighted with it.
I've had my portrait painted by Alison Watt, the painter, before,
who I had to sit for, and ehh, and it's quite...
the interesting thing was it took the same time.
Iain took as long as somebody who was actually,
hand-eye coordination physically applying paint.
Alison took the same time as Iain took
and had the same difficulties about me talking.
But it's interesting that Iain's technique is no quicker
than the actual application of paint
from somebody who's a painter.
So it's either, you're just wasting time,
or you're actually very good at it.
What I tried to do, what I was trying to do with Muriel was,
to kind of in a way deconstruct her image,
take everything out of it and just leave certain aspects of it,
certain recognisable things.
For instance her hair, you know,
I mean even in that her hair's not her platinum spiky blonde,
it's kind of there's green
and there's all sorts of different colours in it
but it's instantly recognisable as Muriel's hair I think,
you know, it's kind of part of her,
kind of the shape of her head and everything.
The main focus really is the eyes, you know,
that's the kind of thing that comes out of it.
Muriel is kind of seen in a certain way
because of her, because of public image.
Now I know Muriel because I've known her for a long time
and I wanted there to be something of the kind of compassion
and the emotion that Muriel has in her life.
I wanted that to come through in the picture.
I didn't want it to be kind of seen as being spiky or brash,
I wanted it to be quite kind of,
quite emotional and quite tranquil in a way.
You never said this before, I'm going to cry!
I've never, I've never discussed it with you...
You never have...
No I've never discussed it with you, you know...
That's really sweet.
That was really what I was trying to do, you know.
I absolutely love the portrait
but that's because it's incredibly flattering
if I'm looking at it just purely from an image of me point of view.
But I love it on a different level as well
because it's a really unusual portrayal
of a three dimensional object
in a two dimensional way but has enormous depth,
if that doesn't sound like a contradiction.
So as a piece of art I think it's sublime
but of course I'm hugely flattered by it
because it's rendered my face completely invisible
except for eyes and lips and a big nose.
I love it. I absolutely love it.
I'm very proud of Iain, I think it's a great piece of work.