in late 2006 i met the painter carlos barrios. looking for a subject for the archibald, i thought he would be perfect - he's been hung in the sulman and blake prizes on a few different occassions, as well as a bunch of successful solo and group shows. and he's a great guy. i'd been wanting to do a life-size portrait on a large, blank canvas for quite some time. i painted 3 paintings of carlos but this was the one i chose to enter, and it uses that blankness. it's not completely blank - i first copied a large amount of imagery off a variety of carlos' paintings, plus stencilled specific spanish words that are relevant to his life and work. i then painted over all that with layer after of thinned out white acrylic. that was the longest part of the process with a balance needing to be made between making blank space but still allowing the underpainting to show through up close.
a detail of the face -
carlos' face on this painting is exactly life size. the entire work is 180x120cm.
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