Portrait Gallery
The portrait gallery contains a selection of Rachel Clark's portrait commissions. Two of the works here have been selected for exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery London (BP Awards). Portrait paintings shown here are in oil and measure 12x12ins/31x31cm. A number of the portrait paintings here are from the "Contentious and Influential" project yet to be exhibited.
Portrait Commissions
Please contact Rachel Clark if you would like to commission a portrait once you have viewed the paintings in the portrait gallery below.
Portraits in Oil
(Click image to enlarge)
The Maudsley Portrait
To celebrate his team's achievements, Professor Robert Howard of the world-famous Institute of Psychiatry in London decided to commission a portrait of his team of psychiatrists and psychologists.
8ft x 13 inches/ 244cm x 33cm
Rachel Clark on portrait commissions
"It is possible to create several portraits of one person which
although vastly different all describe the sitter. It is relatively easy
in a portrait commission to create a physical likeness, but this isn't
enough, there has to be a sense of the person, not just of their
physical presence, but of the quality of the inner person, the thing
which makes them an individual. This is the heart of a successful
portrait commission.
"Having captured the outer shell, there is a process of losing
this to find the 'inside' and sometimes I find that people will say -
'I have no idea if it looks like me but it feels like me absolutely,
it's like meeting myself'. It's a fascinating process, the more you
describe the inner person, the more the outer 'shell' can remove
itself, and if you reinforce the outer, then the inner steps out
of view. Finding the balance is a delicate matter, and how it is
done I can't define. One of the psychiatrists from the group of eight
I painted (The Maudsley Portrait Commission) said it was as if I had
slipped inside their skins for a while, which is exactly what
it feels like, and interestingly, a way I often describe the process."