Edward Sutcliffe is a British figurative painter who paintings have been included in the prestigious BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London on six occasions.
He recently relocated to Dubai and now, he is having his first solo in the UAE with an exhibition titled
In The Bathroom Mirror: Effigies and Faces
.
Sutcliffe's work includes paintings of the Oscar winning actress Glenda Jackson, Sir Paul Stephenson the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and British Labour Party politician Neil Kinnock - which are included in the exhibition alongside brand new work.
Q: Your portraits are incredibly detailed. Do you ask people to sit for you like a traditional portrait painter?
A: Yes I do meet them and sketch them and make several drawings of them but I also have to go from photographs to get that level of detail. Unless someone has the time to sit for me for over 100 hours!
Q: A lot of your paintings feature older people. Do you prefer to paint older people?
A: No I wouldn't say that. I am actually fascinated with flesh in general but of course, sometimes more lines lend themselves to my style.
Q: How do you choose your subjects?
A: There has to be a spark, there has to be something that interests me in their personality and their face. I am interested in something that tells a story.
Q: There is one self-portrait in the show, but you are upside down and on a brown paper bag. Can you explain that?
A: I think that we have a much bigger relationship with our own image than we used to because of the internet. We are all movie stars, magazine editors and we all have responsibilities so I made a mask out of a Bloomingdales paper bag to comment on that.
Q: But this is not a show for new work is it?
A: This show is contains new strains of my work and it signifies a new start. It is my first since I moved to Dubai seven months ago. I don't think I would have been able to do it in London. I simply have more time and resources here.
Q: Which of your paintings are new?
A: There are six new paintings here and the show piece, if you like, is the painting called
Copycat
. It is of a famous fraudster called John Myatt who went to prison for being involved in the biggest art scam of the 20th century. I met him and painted his portrait. Underneath and in a distorted mirror image is a forgery of the forger. I sent an image to a Chinese forger in the city of Shenzhen where they specialise in reproducing European paintings. I was working with the idea of mimicry.
Q: Why did you do that?
A: There is a lot of criticism of photorealistic painting, such as that it is not original, which is truth but I enjoy working in a detailed way so I took the idea of mimicry and copying and took it one step further. I enjoy doing what I do and I passionately believe there can be creativity in mimicry.
Q: What's the most important element of a painting for you?
A: I love the stuff that hits you between the eyes with a bang. Then you will remember it.
* In The Bathroom Mirror: Effigies and Faces by Edward Sutcliffe runs until March 1st at Dubai Community Theatre & Arts Centre (DUCTAC) in Mall of the Emirates, Dubai. For more info visit: www.ductac.org
