After the painting was seen at the Cape Town leg of the show, I was recommended to do the portrait of the city’s outgoing mayor, Leon Markowitz. This was my first official commission.
Response to Markowitz’s portrait was mixed. The council was disturbed by the grass, the general lightness of the image, but most particularly by the frame being incorporated as an extension of the painting. The chief clerk demanded a reframe. Those from the art world also reacted, welcoming the work as breaking the mold of past more serious conventional mayoral portraits, advising the council to accept the work as presented. The controversy gleaned notice from the press.
This flurry brought my name to the fore. At the time the Navy wanted portraits of four past admirals. The Military Art Board, comprised of directors of state galleries from around the country, put my name forward. Subsequently I was recommended for other official commissions. The Board was terminated immediately after the ANC took power in 1994, but I continued to be commissioned to do official portraits, now only from academic institutions and banks. Although the press found me interesting, at the time I gained this success local academics and critics sanctioned artists who were exploring new mediums, installations, video art, photography and performance art. Portraiture particularly was regarded as out of date. But the heart of fashion beats with a fleeting pulse. Currently (2023) rare official commissions are highly contested by a plethora of keen portrait painters. In 2013 Sanlam Private Investments even sponsored South Africa’s first annual portrait competition. The commercial art scene is currently drenched with large expressive paintings of the young female face. So it goes.
Where my subject’s had time to sit, I worked from life. This was rare, so most official portraits were done from photographs, which I always took myself. My interest in Photorealism since early student days, left me content either way. In tackling these portraits my aim is not to flatter or to criticize. I start by gleaning input from the subject, regarding how they see themselves – what is important to them. I then combine this with my own impressions. Initially I used the background to tell a story which would capture an essence. This modus was later adopted by some painters doing commissioned portraits, once the genre again gained traction. I also got commissions from the private sector.
Commissions provided a modest, but workable means of survival. This freed me from getting an agent and the pressure to regularly create commercially viable bodies of work for exhibition, a fine way to work, but different from mine. The commissions were an extension of the FAMOUS SOUTH AFRICAN, fulfilling my dream to be a court painter of a kind. All was going according to plan, my rather precious, perhaps, sense of integrity intact. It suited me to have time to pursue other ideas between commissions, building a private collection of work exploring other avenues and interests.