It's best I don't come out here at night and drink wine and then come back the next day and say, what have I done?
But this is the part I really enjoy, it's just I don't think too much, just like play around. Thinking back to when I was young and trying to establish when I decided I would become an artist is probably different to when I thought about wanting to become an artist. So, I always wanted to become an artist I just didn't think it was possible. I grew up not having much and all I wanted to do is make some money and get out of where I was. I opened up a dry cleaners for some reason and I thought that would be a business. It was terrible. But while I was in that shop I was drawing every day and people would come in and see my drawings and say, why aren't you an artist? And I started to get a few little commissions from customers, which ended up making more money than the dry cleaners. Eventually I realised I wasn't great at doing a whole lot of other things and it, even though it was the life of destined poverty, I thought it was still my best chance to be successful.
You know, I'm highly dyslexic and struggle reading and left school very young and my way of learning was to directly interact with people. And when you get to know people you learn so much from them and if I was a journalist it would be interviewing them and I'd be learning but, for me, it's painting a portrait. It's a tricky thing because some people may have very interesting faces and they might not be interesting and someone might be very interesting and their face isn't.
So, I think you have to look beyond the physical interesting aspects of a face and try and paint an essence of the person. I think a big part of the portrait is someone trusting you and, if they trust you and you do the right thing, people open up and there's moments where someone speaks about their life and what they're passionate about, could be their children, or their partner, or an experience they've had. And there's a look in their eyes and their mouth might move in a certain way or they look across, it's something, you know when it's hitting them emotionally, they do this and it's that kind of moment, that's the image I want to paint.
Every time I do a painting, everything changes. So my palette changes, I don't have any rules about how it's constructed or how I have someone sit for a portrait and I probably wouldn't be able to remember them with my dyslexia, anyway. Every time I paint, it's a new way of painting and I think it's the same way with my work ethic. I've never really had, you know, people get a painter's block or that kind of thing. I have so many ideas and so much I want to do, the only thing stopping me is the hours in a day where I want to hang out with my family, drop the kids off at school.
Any other part of my day, if I can, I'd be in front of the painting and the days just fly away. There's nothing I'd want to do more. There's certain portraits that really stand out because they changed my life. Obviously, the portrait of Heath Ledger. He already meant a lot and he was someone that I looked up to. I learned so much about painting a portrait by just observing him, there was no direction necessary. We had a conversation, or a few conversations and a real thought collaboration and then I just stood back and watched him perform and every time I think about it, it gives me goosebumps. He could explode and then he'll go quiet and the quietness is so loud and it's so hard to capture in a image, so I did my best with that and it turned out to be quite timely. And now the painting means even more to me and it means a lot to his family as well and I think it would have meant a lot to him. The last thing he ever said to me is, this painting is going to change our lives and it really did.
I try to go into meeting someone with an open mind. A lot of people I paint are already my friends, but, for example, Julia Gillard, I'm not into politics, I didn't even know what party she was with, I had no idea and I thought, okay, I'm painting a politician and everyone says politicians are boring. It turns out Julia was incredible and she's very smart and witty, and so open. If I had friends, or my brother, or someone coming to the studio, she was so engaged and I just thought what a special person I've met. I'm really, genuinely interested in learning from anyone I can and I think if you have a passion for people and you really want to get to know them with an open mind and without judgement . I like people to know that a great portrait isn't an accurate portrait.
Speaking of portraits and connecting and that experience it says a lot that that's how I met my wife and a lot of my close friends, people that I painted. I do lots of transparent layers over and over again, push that back, push that around and I also went a bit hard on some of the lines so that it looks a bit graphic looking. It's even just a tiny bit of white, suffering back that harsh, these harsh lines.
So, with my portrait of Hugh Jackman, we actually share a lot of mutual friends, friends that have worked together and friends that I'm very close with. And I remember Baz Luhrmann, who's a mate, saying, you have to meet Hugh, I know you'll get along with him and a few other people said the same thing, but you never know. It's like going on a blind date with someone and you meet up with them and someone got it right you actually have a real great connection. I got a call from the National Portrait Gallery and I actually, I just thought why are they calling me? And it was to do a commission. And to me, photography is a big part of the portrait and I normally film people and photograph them and work, base my portrait, just base the portrait on all my images and film, so I can see that, those moments.
Hugh's son is very into art and quite creative and he wanted to bring his son along for the photo shoot so I had a plan up my sleeve that I was going to ask his son, during the photo shoot, to talk to his dad and pull the trigger on the camera. Another friend of mine, Michael Gracey, an Australian film director who's very close with Hugh. Michael and I had this idea of doing a kind of interactive portrait with holograms and told Hugh about it and he loved the idea and we spent most of our meetings discussing these big ideas about holograms, and paintings, and moving image, and music, and dance. And then it's kind of what's happening now in the world, you just never know what's going to happen next and that's what happened. The virus hit so all these plans we had to do these big projects, and the reason I wasn't taking photos all the time, is because it was getting bigger and bigger. And then Hugh called me up the night before he was coming to do photographs at my house and said, if I don't jump on a plane tonight then I'm going to get shut out of the US and his family was there. So, he had to jump on a plane and I was like, are you sure you can't just come now for it and he's like, no, I can't. So, we had to go to plan B which I think is, I think it's worked out.
I let them settle back in the US and then I made a video for Deb, Hugh's wife, on how to shoot the portrait. I'm walking around my house, talking about my portraits that I've done, telling them how easy it is and what I want them to do. I think you think one thing, and it's nothing wrong with what they did, it's just a translation thing. Like you say something and someone gets it, but what they're getting is different to what you're thinking. And Hugh sent this funny video where he had a dumpling basket on his head and, 'cause I said just relax, do whatever you want, make it funny, so he had this dumpling basket on his head and he's trying to balance it and then he just bursts out laughing. And that was shot on a phone so it was low res and here I am wanting to do this big portrait for the National Portrait Gallery. I want these high res images and Hugh's got a dumping basket on his head. So I had to just laugh my head off myself but I thought how am I going to use this? I went back and said, oh, that's great but can you send some clear images through as well?
There's also so much happening in New York, this is when the virus was hitting New York and, you know, so many important things like the Black Lives Matters and Hugh's very socially engaged and everything matters to him and, so Hugh's obviously absorbed with what's going on and here I am saying take off the dumping basket and send me some more pictures. Anyway, they did send more pictures and Deb, obviously, took them.
Recently I did a photo shoot of Asher during the COVID lockdown time for the cover of Marie Claire and we did a few photos inside and they said, oh, you know, you've done such a great job and I was like, yeah, you weren't there for the shoot. Like, you know, you have really heightened, amazing moments and you have intimate moments, and then you have moments where your wife's saying, you done? I saw those moments in their photographs as well, so I saw the laughing shot, the intimate shot, the love shot, and the, are we done yet shot. So, I think I understood it quite well and I chose the one that I thought I understood from working with my own partner. The painting's quite different to the photograph because I made it black and white and added my own touch to it. But there's a look in Hugh's eyes and there's a relaxed, you know, he's touching his face and his neck but it's not one of those, in front of the camera it's more of a moment in a conversation and you can tell it's a conversation with someone that he knows and trust. It's not a GQ photo shoot, which is probably great images as well, but I didn't want that, I wanted that intimacy we spoke about. So, I think there's a love and intimacy that I think I've got. The side of Hugh that's not "The Showman" it's not "Wolverine" it's something more personable.
Being asked to have a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery is bigger than winning any art prize. It's bigger than an Archibald Prize, it's bigger than a Doug Moran, more important than any of the money or what they could pay me to paint a portrait. I'm just, it's like my dream come true. I think as a portrait artist it doesn't get any more important to me. There's so many incredible works in the National Portrait Gallery, I don't know how, I think it would be arrogant to say mine's going to stand out amongst all the incredible works but, hopefully, there's some young artists like myself and they'll know my story and they'll know Hugh's and it'll make them dream and think big that they can do the same thing because technique's not important. The finish is not important, it's a connection with the person so, hopefully, I can translate that a little to people.
I feel like I get to a point and the painting starts to go backwards and then I realise I should stop. As soon as I've got enough, I try and walk away from it because I think it's easy, again, to overdo a painting as well. And it's hard when it's your own work. Sometimes I look at other people's paintings... You know I struggled with dyslexia but now I know dyslexia is actually my greatest gift so, if I didn't have dyslexia, I wouldn't have the same creative mind I might have, or I might've been better at something else and not become an artist. So I think, if you have a learning disability, if you have dyslexia, if you have a disability in general or just a challenge in life, all these life experiences, I think, you can turn around and use them to make yourself a great artist. Dyslexics in particular, I think, most that I know have great problem solving skills, creative, real empathy and understanding of people. It's just about finding your confidence and also knowing that any art you make, there's no wrong art-making.
I think Baz Luhrmann said to me, once, don't paint for the audience, make your artwork that you believe in and it will find its audience and I've always thought about that when I paint. I'm not painting to sell a painting or to please someone, I'm painting my truth and hopefully there's a whole lot of people that can connect to that. So, just stay true and believe in yourself, paint what you love or, not necessarily paint, do whatever you like to make art. Collage, trace, paint, you know, use your hands, use your feet, there's no rules. Eventually I'll puff paint and stuff. That's why kids get put off becoming artists because they feel like they're not able to paint something accurately. It's like my 10 year old son says, oh dad, I'm no good at art, I can't paint like you. And I'm like, I wish I could, I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to go back to painting like you.
I don't think I'll always paint realist paintings and I'm trying to reverse, slowly reverse backwards. Even a painting of Hugh, to most people it does look very detailed, but I could paint every little pore in his face and have it look exactly like a photograph but I think the illusion, the expression, the experimentation, all of those things make the painting more truthful and interesting and it becomes personal. You know, I want people to walk in, see the portrait of Hugh and feel a real connection.
