For myself, as an abstract painter, I feel it is important to create works that depict more realistic forms of people and objects occasionally. It allows me to develop my understanding of form, proportion, and detail, providing a foundation that can be later abstracted, and subsequently broadens my artistic vocabulary. I typically do this with pencil in my sketchbook, but wanted to try with acrylic paint, as I don’t tend to gravitate towards it over oils. I used a monochromatic colour palette so I could better focus on the tonal values and shading. I stylised them to still look like my works rather than attempting to create photorealistic copies.

The lack of eyes came about because I was reading about Helene Delmaire at the time and was inspired by her long-running series ‘Eyeless’, where she spends hours painting a portrait just to erase and cover the eyes.