RuthLacey
oil paintings
Kate Moss, 2015, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Zadie Smith, 2022, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Marilyn Monroe, 2015, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Clint Eastwood, 2017, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Liz Taylor, 2017, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 On the set of Giant, 1956
Queen Liz, 2022, oil on canvas, 60 x 40cm I started painting Queen Elizabeth when I heard that she’d died. I found an old black and white photo from before she was queen, taken sometime in the 1940s. When I was in primary school, we sang God Save the Queen every morning at school assembly; and of course, her face was on everything, from coins to stamps. It’s not that I was a big fan or anything. I just wanted to paint her.
Mick Jagger, 2014, oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm I painted this after going to a Rolling Stones concert in Park Hayarkon in 2014
Suzie Quatro, 2019, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm
The Fab Four, 2017, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm
Paul Newman, 2009, oil on canvas, 90 x 60 cm On the set of Exodus, 1960. I liked Paul Newman better as a bad boy, and I probably had the character of Eddie from The Hustler in mind while I painted, more than Ari Ben Canaan. So the Star of David in the original photo didn't fit. Just as I began this painting, Paul Newman died, and his photo was everywhere, with that blue of his eyes. When I worked from the black and white it was still seared into my memory. I used Cobalt Blue.
The Dalai Lama, 2014, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm
Liz Taylor, 2023, oil on canvas, 40 x 40cm Inspired by a B&W photo with Richard Burton from the 1970s.
Steve McQueen, 2011, 60 x 50 cm I'd seen his early classics, but was never a huge fan of Steve McQueen. I loved his look in this photo, though. In the original, there's a sign behind him that says "Closed set. No admittance" and even though it didn't make it onto the canvas, I felt like that summed up a lot of what made Steve so cool and unobtainable. When I looked him up, I found out that he'd died of Mesothelioma at 50. While I painted, I had his life story in mind.
Giacometti, 2015, oil on canvas, 60 x 60 cm "Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working."
Gina Lollobrigida, 2017, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 cm
Che Guevara, 2016, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm
James Dean, 2018, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm
Gatsby, 2012, oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm Robert Redford was not their first choice for Gatsby, and Mia Farrow was not the first choice for Daisy. The director had bought the rights to the movie so his wife Ali McGraw could play the lead. Then she left him for Steve McQueen. I had just reread Gatsby when I chose this movie shot out of a book on Movies of the Seventies.
Jimi, 2017, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm
John Lennon, 2013, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Janis Joplin, 2016, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 cm Inspired by a photo shoot for the cover of Rolling Stone
Brigitte Bardot, 2017, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm Inspired by the photo from Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book.
Gary Cooper, 2017, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 cm
Audrey Hepburn, 2017, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 cm
Sarah Bernhardt, 2005, oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm
Inspired by the 1949 photograph by Gordon Parks. Bergman is filming Stromboli in Italy, and having an affair with the director, Rossellini. They are both married. For years, she can't get a job in the US, and works in Europe.
Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, 1954. Like Ingrid Bergman, she got to star with Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. Apparently Bergman suggested her for the lead role in The Nun’s Story after she read the script and realized that she was too old.
She looks as if she's channelling Marilyn. At first I was confused, it could have easily been either one of them. Except she's wearing leather, that's got to be Madonna. And her blonde hair is streaked through with brown, she doesn't hide the fact she's not a natural. Plus, she's in control. No one's messing with her. She even tells the photographer what to do.
Inspired by a 1978 photograph by Ron Gallela, the original paparazzi, at a celebrity tennis match. Marlon Brando hit him, Jackie Onasis sued him, but Dustin Hoffman always smiled when Ron Gallela took his photograph. With this painting, I chose the photographer before the subject, after watching the documentary "Smash his camera."
Humphrey Bogart, 2016, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm