Client 507 - painting for Worthing Churches Homeless Project

Oil on canvas
Mar 2013

My lovely friend works for a charity called the Worthing Churches Homeless Projects, which is always coming up with ways to raise money that seem a little more varied and interesting than a lot of other charities. This spring, they launched an art event explained by their literature as follows:

"The aim of the project is to raise awareness by highlighting the significant number of people Worthing Churches Homeless Projects help in a twelve month period. Moreover, an illustrative project will demonstrate that a homeless person cannot be identified by their appearance and remind us that homelessness is something that can happen to anyone. In doing so the project aims to dispel the stereotypes attributed to homelessness."

Their hope was to recruit one artist for each of the homeless people they had helped in the previous twelve months. When my friend put out a Facebook call for more people to get invovled, I jumped at the chance. This was not just because I, as a definite home-body and non-outdoor type, have always found the idea of homelessness one of the saddest things I can think of and a very worthy charitable cause, and not just because I wanted to help my friend out, but also for the highly selfish reason that I was dying to paint in oils again and this was a perfect opportunity.

I should clarify at this point - I have painted in oils before, but not for years. Like, maybe fifteen years (CAVEAT REMEMBERED SINCE TYPING THIS ORIGINALLY: fifteen years apart from two occasions since, neither of which resulted in a finished picture). My grandmother gave me a set of oil paints and some canvases when I was maybe ten or eleven, and I excitedly set about recreating some horses (my primary interest in life at the time) and, as I recall, one bowl of fruit (an attempt to acknowledge that I understood oil paints were for Serious, Grown-Up Art). I know the last time I actually painted in oils was one day at my friend Emily's house; I know too that the painting was left unfinished and that Emily has had two children since then. I had gathered some new paints and a new tabletop easel and been given an excellent book on painting by the wonderful David Leffel - I just hadn't ever had the time or inclination to actually pick up a brush, and the longer I left it the more I wanted to do it and the bigger a deal it became. This was the perfect opportunity to jump in - I'd be working to a deadline, doing it for someone other than myself, would have a brief to interpret and the aspiration that it needed to be good enough to possibly sell and raise money (which was the slightly scary part...).

Anyway, my friend sent me the 'brief' from which I was to work. Each brief was based on a real person and gave a taste of who they were and how they lived. I saw only one other brief; it was longer than mine, and ended with a note of hope as the man in question was working two jobs and saving to find somewhere else to live. The one I was assigned was shorter, and sadder, and quite a lot more disturbing:

Client 507
I am a 37 year old white, British woman and I have nowhere safe to sleep at night.

That's it really - the rest you see here. I couldn't ask anyone to model for me because of timing, so I used myself and modified some of my features a little. The woman in question was less than a decade older than me and it was important to me to feel a connection and avoid automatically making her look like we'd assume a person might look - like a junkie or a prostitute or even like they were old before their time. Christ knows if I managed any of what I intended - photographs show so little of what's really going on in an oil painting. There's also the fact that I'm still learning how to 'see' objects properly for painting - it's a really peculiar thing, so I had to get someone else to look at the painting a couple of times and tell me what was wrong with it because once I started seeing the paint itself, I could no longer really see what I was painting in the same way. Yes, I'm well aware how wank that sounds, but it's sadly true.

The painting is currently drying in my house and will hopefully be picked up in a week or so if it's dry enough. I'm glad I did it, I enjoyed painting it and I can't wait to start the next portrait because I already learned so much from just this one. My main hopes for this picture are twofold:

¤ That it raises at least some money for the homeless

¤ That if someone buys it, it frightens their children for generations.