Thérèse Neelands

Reflection, Lucien Freud

I’ve been working on a portrait this afternoon, and when the light began to grow dim, I felt I had to stop, although I wasn’t quite ready to, and still wanted to keep working. I decided I would at least look at some paintings to wind me down, and googled Lucien Freud, my absolute favourite portrait painter and definitely one of my favourite painters ever.

On You Tube, I found an old video of an interview with him and Jake Auerbach in 1988 at The Hayward Gallery where he had his retrospective. I had never seen him actually speaking before, (interview’s are pretty rare for him) and it was really quite fascinating! The videos are in 5 parts and you can watch them here: You Tube

In 2005, there was a short film made by Jake Auerbach and Freud’s biographer William Feaver. The film is a series of  interviews of his friends and sitters (including his many daughters). It’s called Lucien Freud: Portraits. You can buy the DVD and it is sometimes aired on TVO. In fact, the AGO may even have it in their bookstore.

Yesterday afternoon Andrew and I finally went to visit the transformed  ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO . Since we  got there an hour before closing, we only made it round the first floor, a luxury we can take now that we have our memberships! The new Walker Court is definitely a place I see myself just sitting down and hanging out in.  I also really liked the salon-style hanging in the Georgia Ridley Salon which completely surrounds you.

I can’t wait to walk over there after work or on my lunch and walk up the spiral staircase and take my time with everything. It makes me think how much I love living in a city where I live 20 minutes away from real live works most people only get to see in print. It’s definitely a strange feeling to spot a painting across a room that you’ve seen a billion times before in some book or other, and walk right up to it. It’s an experience that always makes my hair rise, like the ghost of a painter is standing right beside me.