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Notes

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The artist has said of this work: ‘This painting took over a year to complete, which involved Ben coming to sit for me 10am–5pm, on average twice a week. It was a mammoth challenge for me to finish, involving numerous corrections and scraping off the paint. Imagine putting 30 hours of work into an ear then realising that you are four centimetres off: that is three weeks’ work down the drain! As every aspect of painting a head 20 times life-size, from life, was a leap into the unknown, every mark in this painting was a discovery of seeing and translating this into paint. To give it a historical perspective, a giant head painted from life without the help of mechanical aids has never been attempted before. The reason for this is that artists have thought it to be an impossible painting challenge.