Keith Maclean (oil on canvas)

I was introduced to Keith Maclean by Elżbieta Wojdyla (mentioned in a 1975 contribution I made to an anthology, and a book published ten years later outlining supernatural disturbances at Highgate Cemetery). This was a time when the ethos of the Sixties was still evident at the turn of the Seventies. In my book, probably owing to his surname, he is referred to as "a young man of Scottish descent,"despite his proclaimed Welsh connections and quintessential Englishness. The last time he appeared (Christmas 2018) the tartan trousers he wore indicated my original deduction was close. 

This is my fifth and final portrait of Keith Maclean. It benefits from my current stage as an expressionist artist and encapsulates the partially transparent subject in tripersona from April 1973, July 2017 and December 2018 when last he manifested in my home as a ghostly visitor. An anaemic moon hovers in the background in sad reflection of the more certain moon in the portrait I made of Elżbieta Wojdyla many moons prior. The intensity of the subject's gaze has increased with the passing of time. Yet there is still a trace of the moment atop Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath, 13 April 1973, lingering amidst the peaceful cerulean of an early evening sky that suggests something even higher. I employed colour gingerly. No tartan necessary. This is my ultimate portrait of him. 

David Farrant Posthumously (oil on canvas)

Dead Romantics (oil on canvas)

Lucietta (oil on canvas)

"Byron was seldom without consolation of the female kind and of the various servant maids who slipped between his sheets to keep him company at Newstead, Lucy was his favourite. He called her Lucinda, but in a poem she appears as Lucietta."   (Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, Gothic Press, 1992)

Lord Byron (oil on canvas)

Lucy Monk (oil on canvas)

Carmel (oil on canvas)

The large portrait in oils was ostensibly someone born on 31 October 1895 who completely and mysteriously disappeared without trace in May 1945. It hangs in a private gallery of paintings. My work in recent times has become more expressionist, and this assisted in recognising who the portrait reminded me of. The more I looked at it the more I saw the vision of a girl born on 5 May 1945 who appeared out of nowhere, subsumed in sunbeams on what felt like an early October autumnal day's enchantment, but in fact it was late April 1967. It must have been around the time people took lunch, for the broad pavement around the corner from my photographic portrait studio was milling with hazy figures going hither and thither. Then she appeared from out of the crowd.