In Good Hands: The Story Behind The Pirate
Some paintings arrive fully formed in your head. Others sneak up on you. The Pirate was definitely the latter.
It started with a funny conversation over WhatsApp. I was chatting with my old art teacher from the 90s, Chris Tinkler - someone I’ve reconnected with over the last couple of years after more than two decades apart. We'd been talking about self-portraits and artists who include themselves in their work - starting with Jenny Saville and her new exhibition The Anatomy of Painting, which has just opened at the National Portrait Gallery.
That led us into a whole tangent about hands in portraiture. I’d mentioned I’d recently started introducing hands more intentionally into my own work. Chris messaged back saying, "You can see hands in Michelangelo." And I replied, "Michelangelo painted good hands."
Not long after that, he sent me a series of photos he’d taken of himself - including one where his hand is covering his face, with the throwaway joke that it was amazing how such a small hand could block out everything. One of those images stopped me. The hand over the face looked like a kind of makeshift eyepatch - and just like that, The Pirate was born.
I wasn’t planning to paint him that day. I thought I’d be continuing with The Space Between Us. But something about the ease of that conversation, the visual trigger of the photo, and the mood I was in made me reach for the brush. I didn’t want to think it through - I just wanted to follow the impulse.
I’d just come back from the Ionian Islands, and the light and colour of that trip were still in my head - especially the cerulean blues and sea greens. They made their way into the work almost without me realising.
The Pirate isn’t for sale. It’s a one-off - a spontaneous portrait born out of conversation, memory, humour, and a long thread of connection between teacher and student. It holds its own quiet meaning. A hand over a face, part mask, part gesture - something playful, something reflective, something worth painting.
The Pirate
Oil and Sennelier oil stick on Fabriano Tela oil paper
50 x 65 cm
2025
Not for sale