Paul and Jason

I am trained as an architect and consider myself to be a draughtsman rather than a painter. I work primarily in a mixture of graphite and watercolour. I am interested in the topography of the human face. I explore this through portraits of people I love and admire. These range from
family, friends and colleagues to Canadian and interna#onal figures whose work or
achievements I admire.
I work by spending a considerable #me examining photographs of my subjects, which I make
myself when possible, using Adobe Photoshop to traverse the landscape of the face or faces in
question. Initially, I prepare detailed drawings, which I consider to be maps – usually with a
sharp 2H pencil. The preparatory drawing thus prepared then receives a number of watercolour
washes with a wet-on-dry technique.
“Paul and Jason” is one such graphite and watercolour work. The two young people in the drawing are family members, close in age, part of a New Year’s day gathering in 2023. They have grown in parallel to one another, living in different cites. In this double portrait, I was interested in exploring this parallelism through a rendering of their individual postures and
attitudes.