Portraits to make you think
5 September 2024
If you're looking around our 'Children and Young People's Portrait Competition' display you're bound to notice these two wonderful portraits from our art collection. They're on show with a selection of other materials to complement the 160+ competition entries we received and shed more light on portraiture in its many different forms. Find out more about them here - and catch them before the display comes to an end on 29 September.
The Year List (Bassaleg Viaduct, River Ebbw, Redstart), 2012 by David Kim Whittaker
This eye-catching painting was generously donated to our permanent art collections in late 2013 by trans artist David Kim Whittaker (b.1964) with the support of their gallery in St Ives. We’ve displayed it in three different exhibitions to date.
Whittaker is a self-taught painter and sculptor from Cornwall who’s exhibited widely in the UK and abroad and has work in a number of private collections. They became a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists in 2009 and won first prize at the National Open Art Competition in 2011.
Whittaker is known for large-scale expressive paintings that feature human heads but with the faces substituted for highly detailed landscapes. The works represent the dual states of inner and outer calm and conflict, strength and fragility, masculine and feminine.
Gbenga, 2004 by Nahem Shoa
Nahem Shoa (b.1968), is a British-based painter who was born to an Adenite Jewish father (Aden is a port city in Yemen) with Ethiopian heritage, and a Russian-Scottish mother. As a teenager he trained as an apprentice with Robert Lenkiewicz.
His career has spanned portraiture and landscapes, but he is perhaps best known for a series of huge works called Giant Heads, which he painted at up to 15 times life size. The works featured British people from a range of backgrounds and aimed “to capture and celebrate the multicultural nature of our society” and “rebalance the lack of positive imagery for black British people in UK art galleries”.
The works were exhibited at Bury Art Gallery and Museum, the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, Hartlepool City Art Gallery and the former Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery in 2004.
This paintings was featured in the exhibition and acquired for our collections that same year. It’s a portrait of Shoa’s friend and fellow artist, Gbenga Ilumoka whom he’s painted on a number of occasions. It shows some of the traditional techniques Shoa was taught by Lenkiewicz, such as the bold and thickly applied paint, as well as how skilled he is at capturing the individuality of his sitters.
Find out more about our Children and Young People's Portrait Competition display.
Listen to David Kim Whittaker speaking about their work. See Nahem Shoa in his studio.