I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of art history was a touch lacking, but I am doing my best to make up for lost time.
One name kept coming up in conversation – whether it be in terms of who attends what Life Drawing class or who learned what from whom during their own artistic development – and that name was Robert Hannaford. I felt a bit embarrassed that I didn’t know more about him, especially being a local South Australian and all.
I set about tracking down a copy of the book ‘Robert Hannaford – Natural Eye’ by John Neylon which I soon found was out of print, but eventually discovered a well looked after second-hand copy at Michael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers in the city.
I took it home and read it from cover to cover, gaining a great appreciation from his story, methods, practice techniques and philosophy.
He reaffirmed the notion that working from life, rather than photos – a point also stressed vehemently by Richard Schmid – builds a much greater appreciation and understand of the subject you are attempting to convey and vastly improves your eye and skills. His range of self portrait paintings are also testament to this which he explains:
I paint myself because I am always available to model and because it is always difficult to be honest with oneself.
This explanation struck a chord with me and I determined that a regular self portrait should also be a part of my own regular practice going forward.
