The background
In March of 1994, according to my sketchbook at the time, I had the idea of doing a picture of “several Amandas, 2-4“. That’s all there is, as far as preliminary work goes.
The double self portrait hidden in my plan chest for years, was made according to my very rudimentary practice at the time, on a stretched piece of brown packing paper, primed with white household emulsion.
This is nto a good choice of support for a painting. At least buy good quality cartridge paper and prime it with acrylic gesso!
When I gave my parents a double portrait of my sister’s wedding, the brown paper and emulsion approach led to bits of the painting crumbling away. My parents, bless them, put in the effort to get the wedding painting properly framed. This was quite a repair job for the framer! The approach will not be repeated for any younger family weddings.
The process
Grim, isn’t it? Twenty-six years later, when shuffling through the contents of my plan chest for older stuff to be cut up and used in a collage. I found the original double self portrait and posted it on Facebook as an example of a horror picture. The muddy palette was particularly detestable. Moreover, the right hand Amanda had an oddly diagonal distortion of her face. Weirdly enough, some people liked it. There were good parts, for example, the blue dress with red circles, a pregnancy number made from Ankara Wax fabric bought in Brixton. The shapes and the wood pattern of the dresser. Our stack of colourful bowls and David’s cast-iron teapot on the top. Even the yellow background.
Things in our home had not changed much. I avoided acrylics in the 90s. They were not all that pleasant to use and they left a strange plasticky surface. Now, following a new teacher, Tracy Verdugo (among others) I learned that acrylic in tubes had been joined by acrylic inks and fluid acrylic in zingy, clear tones and with a matt finish. I could do better by this 31 year old, gazing at herself.
The new painting started with a tracing of the figures and the merest outline of the dresser.
The result
I reversed the portraits because, after all, I had been looking in a mirror. The dresser contents were still similar but we have moved countries since. First, I impressed the outline onto a fresh piece of paper bought from Seawhite around 20 years ago. Next I set off, being true to my love of lots of clean colour and my delight in the new paint. This meant using quite a lot of fluid acrylics from Golden.
This slider shows the painting’s progress (in varying lighting, apologies!). If you look closely, you’ll see that the relative positions of glasses and cups in the cupboard changed halfway through.
It was so freeing to be able to paint the figures and the china just as best suited the painting. After all, 31 year old Amanda is no longer available. Older Amanda wears the old spectacles, but a dress in a different colour so it popped a bit more. Here is my prettiest china, whether it actually lives in the cupboard or not. Do you see the Russian doll peeping out? She exists but normally sits elsewhere.