In many respects I am very, very different from him, but there are some similarities too. The least of those is that he painted too (On his 89 impressionist paintings by the way very few people are depicted). He definitely was kind of a loner and he called himself sentimental. I like to see myself as ‘Merciless Yet Emphatic
‘. The most striking similarity is that reaching 65 years of age most certainly to neither of us meant: giving up.
Why does Churchill feature so prominently on this site, so much so that this tribute is used as symbol of civilisation and ‘What Did Winston Do‘ (WDWD) forms the entrance and main category within ‘History’?
I am not going to write that down here and now, but will dedicate, numerous texts and videos on him in the near future.
About the painted tribute itself
At first, actually this oilpainting was meant to be kind of a final preliminary for the real tribute to him (depicting WSC adressing the US Congress after Pearl Harbour), focusing on getting acquinted further with the characteristic features of his face and on the skincolour(s) I should apply.
As references I used three black and white photos and two paintings: for the face left below and in the centre.
Clockwise, ending in the middle, Sir Winston was in the second, third, seventh, eighths and (very start of) nineth decade of his life.
The face in the centre is based on a painting by the famous Graham Sutherland: his ínfamous painting. The old man himself disliked it very much. So much so, that his wife Clementine later destroyed the original. Note that the British parliament paid the artist a fee that today would be worth around 100.000 US dollars and the great man himself could be persuaded to unveil it on which occasion he gave a very special “compliment”: ‘a remarkable example of modern art ‘.
Sutherland indeed had depicted Churchill not only as an old man, but as sad and vulnerable too. In my painting I have tried to change it in a way that honours both Sutherland and Churchill a bit more. Especially the body language is very different.
BTW, I consider him as the greatest statesman who ever lived. Period.
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