The black coat: Lily Brett by David Rankin is a modest oil on canvas painting 53.5 centimetres high by 41 centimetres wide of the painter’s wife, the novelist, essayist and poet Lily Brett.
The underpainting of the canvas is a mid-green which shows through the dynamic broad brushstrokes of the overlaid colours that build the picture. The background is varying shades of deep blue with green showing through in parts.
Lily faces directly forward, her head cropped at the crown and tilted to her left as if squashed into the space. Her face is framed by a mass of shoulder length wild curly black hair. Dominating her face are large dark eyes beneath a dark brow. She has a long straight nose with a black smudge creating her mouth. Orange paint blends into the green to produce the light brown of her skin with streaks of golden yellow across her brow. Areas of exposed green create shadows around her eyes with eerie effect.
Lily’s slim body is clothed in a black high-necked coat with wide lapels, areas of thinner paint providing tonal variation to form the contours of her body, finishing at her hips.
In the bottom righthand corner Rankin 89 is signed in light white paint.
Audio description script written and voiced by Krysia Kitch