BBC1 Extraordinary Portraits
This is my portrait of Christian Foley, created for the BBC One series, Extraordinary Portraits.
Christian is a musician, poet, writer, educator and mental health ambassador. I had the great pleasure of spending time with him towards the end of last year and found him to be a warm and articulate person - patient and caring with his students, and fun and creative with his friends. He is also very gestural, using his hands and body a lot when he talks, and he has a beautifully flowing rhythm to his speech. I wanted to try and encapsulate all these aspects of Christian's character in my portrait. I only had 3 weeks to do it though, and this was my biggest professional challenge to date, since I would normally spend longer than that just planning a portrait! Using elements from dozens of different photographs, I composed a painting that comprised three versions of Christian, which I thought best represented who he is, and incorporated the wallpaper from the Old Courts, where we did our photoshoot, to help create an organic rhythm in the background.
It was a real privilege to get to know Christian and to meet his lovely family and friends. It was a joy to watch him perform his wonderful poetry, learn how he does his incredible freestyles and even get a glimpse into his songwriting process, alongside his friends and collaborators. The most inspiring part for me though was watching him in his role as a teacher. His innovative teaching methods were captivating to watch. It was abundantly clear that his pupils loved his lessons and were enthralled and engaged in the learning process, but they were also quick to tell me themselves how much they loved having Christian as their teacher. It was very touching.
Teachers play such a crucial role in our lives, it makes a big difference if you have one that inspires you. Good teachers help mould us into the people we are today, whether providing us with the skills we need in our jobs, pushing us to be the best that we can be, or just being supportive when we are having a tough time, and they are, I think, hugely underappreciated. So to Christian and all the other teachers out there – thank you for everything you do!
Series 2 Episode 6 will be repeated on Thursday at 00:45 on BBC1 and Friday 08:30 on BBC2, and will be available to watch on iPlayer from tomorrow.