Le Mauvais Garçon Painting

Here is a portrait of someone special. It is based on a photograph taken in Paris. I was struck by the colour of the sitter’s jumper, and decided to let that take centre stage in the painting, by contrasting it with a bright complementary orange (which I also used as the ground colour for this work). I think this painting betrays the tension between the urge to achieve a likeness of the sitter, and the desire to just paint loosely and suggest objects, rather than explicitly describe them. I have always been inspired by artworks from people who work beautifully with colour and simplified shapes, such as Milton Avery, Elisabeth Blackadder, Gabrielle Münter, and of course Matisse and Derain. I’ve been striving to incorporate some of this into my own work, and to keep walking the fine line between representation and abstraction. Although this portrait is obviously realistic at first sight, my real drivers for the whole work were colour and line. The idea was to structure the composition around obvious ‘dividers’ (the shoulder and arm, the counter) which would delineate flat areas of colour. If you’re wondering about the title, it’s French for ‘the bad boy’ (or even ‘the wrong boy’ in some contexts). It’s also a nod to the name of the restaurant where we were dining at the time.