Fresh Paint
Roxana Halls
The south London artist and occasional Artists &
Illustrators contributor Roxana Halls decided she would
like to paint the portrait of Scottish singer-songwriter
Horse McDonald while watching her in concert several
years ago. Besides admiring Horse’s music, Roxana was
keen to paint the proud lesbian singer for more personal
reasons too. “She was always out, standing as a lodestar
for so many of us for so long, from a time when it was such
a brave and potentially career-ruinous declaration.”
After an approach was made and accepted, a sitting
was arranged to discuss the collaboration and capture
reference material. “I knew that I wanted to capture her
mid-performance: much of my work is inflected with a
certain theatricality and I often paint actors and singers,”
explains Roxana.
“Much to the envy of many of my friends, several of
whom are decades-long fans, Horse and I decided that the
best way to approach this would be for her to sing for me
while I filmed her and analysed her performance.”
“I had noticed that, when she sang, she made a variety
of highly distinctive hand gestures, each expression of
which seemed to underscore her phrasing and cadence,”
she adds. Those movements would become a key feature
of the resulting composition, which was actually completed
in 2019 yet only unveiled recently.
Roxana refers to herself as “a maker of images made
from colour” and one of the many appealing facets of
her work is a willingness to play with the brighter, more
synthetic corners of her palette. In the case of Horse,
that meant suggesting a false, neon light.
“I am interested in evoking the sensation that the figure
bathed in this way is somehow ‘denatured’ by it, as though
they are no longer entirely comprised of flesh and blood
but rather are made of light, liquid or metal. In a sense
that is what the performer becomes when they are on
stage, something more than human.”
The results are equally otherworldly and available
for us mere mortals to see up close when the Scottish
National Portrait Gallery reopens soon. The painting was
acquired for the national collection and has been hanging
in the empty Great Hall since December.
“I recall my first visit and thinking it was one of the most
beautiful spaces in any gallery I’d seen,” says the artist.
“I’m humbled to be part of it.”
http://www.roxanahalls.comRIGHT Roxana
Halls, Horse
McDonald, oil on
linen, 140x120cm