Hamish Blakely
"Each bare canvas brings enough self doubt and nerves to keep me on my toes every time. I splodge the paint on and hope that I win the battle as sometimes the brushes and paint have their own peculiar ideas about how things should look."
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"I come from a theatrical background. I'm half Irish and my childhood home was a place where extraordinary things happened. It was an environment where my brothers and I seemed bound to do something unusual. I'm very grateful for that.
"As far as subject matter is concerned, I have always loved painting people, favouring glimpses of figures and anatomy. Even in the enormous, allegorical works of classical masters, I have always been drawn to confined areas of a piece - a spotlit area that reveals a rigid jaw line, or the twist in a turned neck."