Mixed media on linen over panel

90 x 80 x 4.5 cm

NOT FOR SALE

This work is an allegorical portrait of my father, who is also a painter. The composition includes 'portraits' of some of my favourite works of his and details of some of his paintings which have been re-contextualized. The work is a combination of keenly observed realism and slight abstraction. The use of mixed media allowed me to find a unique language through the piece.

The work is a homage to my father and what I feel I have inherited from him—the artist's way of seeing beauty. It is also intended as a biographical portrait that asks what is left of us at the end of a life, a question that is very prescient for my father now.

The title is borrowed from a sentence in Philip Larkin's An Arundel Tomb, which reads, "What will survive of us is love." By removing the last word, the meaning of the sentence becomes more of an open question.