Paul Emsley : UK BP Portrait Awards 07 Finalist

By Melvyn Minnaar

Paul Emsley has a thing about drawing animals, and particularly his powerfully precise workings with charcoal, manipulating a deft and dramatic chiascurro, of great beasts have built him a serious following locally and among the international collectors (including an Arab prince or two) connected by his UK agency, the esteemed Redfern Gallery in London’s arty Cork Street. In recent times, animals gave way to humans - the close-up intimacy of their bodies, skin and faces. This, of course, leads to portraiture, and Emsley has taken it on in the classic means (paint) and a true, but personalised, reinvented sense of that ancient trade of artistic skill, challenging (yet again, in another manner) his formidable drawing/illustrative knack of ‘working
‘beyond realism’. That has lead to his, on entering for the first time, being selected as one of three finalists in one of the world’s great portraiture projects, the annual BP Portrait Awards. Emsley’s portrait of fellow artist Michael Simpson, a well-known British contemporary who lives in the same town as he does, will take pride of place in the very popular and highly-regarded
exhibition of the competition’s finest at London’s National Portrait Gallery in June. After closing in September, the exhibition will be shown at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. Being one of the top three in the BP Portrait Awards (first prize is a cool £25 000; second £8 000 and the third £6 000) is certainly a career fillip for an artist, winning even more so when announced at a fancy banquet on
June 20. Paul Emsley, who considers himself very much a South African artist, has lived in the village of Bradford on Avon for the last decade or so, having taught at the University of Stellenbosch’s arts department until 1995.
His work is in most public art collection, having made a name for himself since the original Cape Town biennales way back in the late 1970s and his first solo show in 1981. Drawing is Emsley’s great obsession as an artist. He says he wanted to draw Simpson ever since he met him. “Michael Simpson is a very private person. We sometimes meet by chance and each time I am struck by his appearance. I have long
wanted to draw or paint him. He very kindly agreed to the portrait in February. I did not feel that I could ask him to sit for long periods so I worked from observation and from photographs taken at his studio. The painting took five weeks to complete. I find his face and head visually interesting and with a strong presence. I feel that it is essentially European, carrying something of the history of particularly Eastern Europe. One side of his family line is from Russia.
“He studied at the Royal College of Art in the early 1960s and was a contemporary of David Hockney, R. B. Kitaj, Patrick Caulfield and many others. He has had solo shows at the Serpentine in 1985, Arnolfini and other major galleries. He has won various major awards and recently held a solo show at the David Risley Gallery in Vyner Street.” Emsley says he is keen to be involved in some portraiture project in South Africa. This may come about should he, in addition to one of the three top prizes, be given the BP Travel Award, part of the annual competition, which enables an artist to work for an agreed period of time in Britain or abroad. Watch this space.