Saturday 17 January 2015, 10am
Spent a pleasant evening with Tim Page on Thursday,
chatting, drinking and drawing long into the night.
My initial intention was to portray him sitting at the table
writing in his journal, cameras, papers and ashtray scattered in front of him
and another portrait of him (painted in 1972 in Los Angeles) in the background.
I soon realised setting up a formal pose was going to be hard to control. And
control isn’t something that appeals to me in a sitting. After the first beer I
realised the light was right where he sat as we chatted, so I abandoned any
attempts at planning, got the board out and set to work.
He was a very naughty boy and made no attempt to sit still
and I had to fix a feature from time to time as his head fleetingly passed
through the right orientation. This became even more difficult when Kel and
Billy turned up and he spent most of the time with his head sideways, talking
to them. In the end I spent the last couple of hours largely ignoring him and
working from memory. I think I got a pretty good likeness in the end, but the
formal iconic composition is going to be difficult to energise. It may all come
down to the paintwork in the end.
“Page After Popsicle”
Tim was born in England, but now lives in Brisbane. Tim is
best known as a Vietnam War and Rolling Stone photojournalist. Such a narrow
job description discounts all the other adventures he’s crammed into his long
and interesting life. He was the inspiration for the crazed Dennis Hopper
character in 'Apocalypse Now' and several other incidents in the movie.
He was a close friend of Sean Flynn, son of Errol, who was
also photographing the war when he disappeared on the Cambodian border. Tim has
made it his life mission to find and repatriate the remains of the 35
journalists still missing from the conflict.
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