AB(event) Painting

This piece is from a series of works based on one press image of a peaceful Zimbabwean demonstrator beaten to the ground by police. I have substituted a gay (homosexuality is a crime in Zimbabwe) friend of mine who's life is open and free as the subject. I have then painted him on a very large scale and left the reading of the staring portrait open - alive or dead? Quietly contemplative? I think of the painting as being about resilience in the face of the abuse of power. I have taken a very specific story and tried to make it a universal one.

Working directly from a laptop screen, I've combined both the incidental light of photography and the actual light passing through the image which gives the painting an unusual depth and clarity of light and colour. The pinks, purples and oranges in this painting are intense and to me give the painting a positive, vibrant feeling in the face of the difficult subtext. The complex visual play between surface and subject, and a sense of ingrained time brought on through the application of many layers of paint over a long period seems to bring the portrait out of the picture plane, right into the viewers personal space alive and breathing despite the sculptural bust-like stillness.