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The portrait was unveiled in Xania, Crete in Greece in October 2012.It was started in August 2011 and painted over many sessions in Xania during summer and winter. The Greek unveiling was a very happy event with many friends from all over. The painting is now 'home' in London where we await the London unveiling party.
"Since Fionna painted my portrait, I have been to quite a few exhibitions where portraits featured strongly. I see them very differently after the days Fionna and I spent together as she turned what she saw of me sitting in the 'studio' we set up in our guest house in Crete into a work that everyone says captures my being. I know now that every worthwhile portrait that I see must also reflect a quite unique relationship between painter and subject.
It's an extraordinary process. It started with a couple of pencil sketches where over the space of a few hours Fionna gently teased my face out of the paper she worked on.
We talked through the pose and the look and then began on the full size portrait, first in pencil and then in acrylic. This takes time, patience and great deal of communication between artist and subject. Of course it's a confessional. I found myself talking about my life and the events that have shaped me.
I talked about how I felt about myself as a physical being and how it felt to inhabit my skin; what was good and less good and where the challenges lay. Sometimes it was quite painful as I talked more deeply about my life and times, able to do this because at the beginning we had a vow of silence about what was said in the studio.
We had moments of close communication, laughter, amazement and the odd cross word when events conspired to make one or other of us feel grumpy. We shared meals in between sittings, mainly prepared for us by my husband John (who commissioned the work as a wedding anniversary present).
A common thread for me was watching Fionna's consummate professionalism as she worked. She works from life and life is what she captures. And she sticks tenaciously, even grittily, to a hand, a mouth or the set of the clothes until they come right by her own exacting standards.
She also consults often about progress - none of this not seeing the work until it was finished - which was a great relief.
I look at my portrait almost every day I am in London and remember the extraordinary experience those months of intermittent sitting provided - they happened when we were both in Crete together.
I never cease to be amazed that what I see on my wall is not just how I look, or looked when I was a couple of years younger and distinctly heavier than I am now, but also how I feel and continue to feel."
-Helen Murliss