The Sevenoaks Series
The Sevenoaks Series is my continuing project to celebrate the strong and lively independent identity of the town through images of some of its most dynamic personalities.
Under the title 'Names and Faces: The Sevenoaks Series', the first 16 portraits formed the inaugural exhibition in the brand new gallery space in the Sevenoaks Chronicle office, Sevenoaks High Street. The exhibition ran from 17th November until the end of December 2005.
The series has now been extended with two portraits on a larger scale, one of the Mayor of Sevenoaks and one of the President of the Royal College of Nurses, recently awarded the CBE.
   
   
   
   
The Doctor, The Bishop, The Tailor, The Headmistress,
The Headmaster, The Newspaper Editor, The Bookshop Owner, The Supermarket Manager,
The Police Constable, The Headmistress, The Theatre Executive, The Shoe Retailer,
The MP, The Lawyer, The Pub Landlord, The Bookshop Owner
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Names and Faces
In this series of portraits of prominent Sevenoaks personalities, I have used repetition of format and colour to not only emphasise the unity and cohesiveness of the community so represented, but also to act as a counterpoint to the human diversity that is thereby portrayed.
There is no such thing as a representative figure in a living community; the collective identity wells up and is expressed through the connections and tensions between a community's members. So it is with the portraits. Although strongly individualised, they all exist in the presence of the others, creating a larger, unpainted work, that exists in the interplay between the separate portraits themselves.
In a community such as Sevenoaks the membrane separating the public figure from the private person is thin to the point of invisibility: we are all on show, we are all in the gaze of each other. It was this that I have sought to capture: the moment that a private person is open to being in the public gaze, whether it be in a shop, a school, a pulpit or an office, a moment echoed in the act of being painted.
I am grateful for the time, honesty, bravery and generosity of my sitters, who together confronted these facts, with grace and with an abundance of style.
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© 2005 All Rights Reserved.
