#1 Some background painting

John, Julia and Bridget

I painted a large oil portrait of my father, the artist John Strevens when I was 22 and he was 77. Every morning, except Sunday, he’d amble down the path to his studio at the bottom of the garden, slip his old fashioned artist’s smock over his shirt and tie - ties kept his neck warm, he’d explain. He’d look through his paint-spattered vinyls (LP records as he’d call them) and switch on the huge record player for some ‘musical company’. But for once, I was there. He handed over the red tin of workman’s ‘barrier cream’ for me to rub into my hands too. Then came the coils of paint to squeeze out onto the palette (be generous with paint, he’d say) starting with the big tube of titanium white, followed by Windsor Lemon, the cadmiums, perhaps a glob of Alizarin Crimson (more of the palette order later) and a top-up of turps and linseed oil in the metal cups clipped on the palette, followed by the gentle clatter of brushes as he picked which to work with. ‘Nice long brushes’, he’d say, ‘to keep you well away to get an overview’.

For the first and only time, it was his turn to be my model. I was perched on the mouldy old red carpeted ‘model throne’ where my ma’ and I had often posed. (Inside the model throne was a bunch of ‘dressing-up’ costumes - but that’s another story to come). The swish of his brush on canvas, of my brush on the board, the occasional clink of a brush heel hitting the can of oil and turps, the odd dog bark or a bird call, punctuated the silence until, two or three hours later, came the tentative knock.

Bridget Strevens Marzo - watercolour 1978

There’s my mum, ma, Julia at the door. “Tea’s ready!”

I was ready for a break, hoping she wouldn’t come in to inspect my work in progress though she was never critical. After a bit of a clear-up we followed her back up to the house for a cup of strong tea and her very own ‘Jackson Pollock’ cake drizzled with random pink, green and white lemon icing . It sat framed in a plate on a tray upon one of her tablecloth creations - perhaps that day it was this ochre table cloth embroidered with her imaginary birds.

If you look top centre of the watercolour above you’ll see a quick impression of a portrait of me, little Bridget. The face is my logo for The Artists’ Child. As I write, I am sitting near the full length painting. Later I will take you through some sketches of my vivid memory as sitter aged 5, and my conversation with the portrait painter at work. How much I learnt!

Here’s a closer look at the the top right hand corner of my portrait of John:

John Strevens in his studio by Bridget Strevens Marzo 1979

In the top right corner you can see a very rough impression of this…

Julia Strevens in her conservatory by John Strevens

It’s my dad John’s painting of my mum Julia Strevens, which hung on the studio wall. Why had I turned her into summary, abstract shapes? Well I was focusing on him of course, but I confess it wasn’t my favourite of his portraits of Julia. However ‘It captures something’ as he’d sometimes say. And mum liked it because she was fond of her pelargoniums and monstera deliciosa and more in the conservatory she had had built at the back of our semi-detached, not to mention fond of her dressing gown.

When I was 31 my portrait of John Strevens was damaged beyond repair in a fire. It was reproduced thankfully in a book about him which his US dealer Kurt E. Schon had commissioned. After John died in 1990, my mum asked me to paint a copy of it which I did dutifully. It wasn’t as good a copy as I had painted of a Titian in the Louvre, with my official Copyist’s card (another story to come!) Still, she was pleased with it.

This peaceful ‘pleasant reality’ as Dad liked to call it, this regular, productive if rather isolated daily life in the outer suburbs, was the background that my parents provided for me, for a good part of my childhood and teenage years.

It’s not the whole story. Is it ever?

It took me a while to realise what they had been up against and just how hard they had both struggled to get there. And I came to appreciate just how rare and precious such stretches of stability can be.