I have been a friend of Carole Racionzer for some time now and several years ago she also bought my 2012 portrait of my cousin Anna Rendall playing the cello.
The first painting of mine that Carole bought; a portrait of my cousin playing the cello.
I was delighted to learn that she was getting married to Stan in 2017, and when she asked if I could paint a picture as her main wedding present I was happy to help. The idea was that instead of her guests buying wine glasses or kitchen paraphernalia as presents, as a unique and personal alternative they could all chip in for a custom painting. I have long thought that many wedding photographs end up being quite formal, posed and lacking in soul. A party painting like the ones I am known for could provide a lasting memento of the day and it would also reflect the life and joy of their wedding celebration.
Stan and Carole on their wedding day. This scene formed the initial focus of the painting.Chris and Carole at the beginning of the reception, as the painting starts to take shape. Chris’s Hogmanay mural helped create a party ambience in the background, and also helped guests understand what the painting would eventually become.
I decided to paint portraits of all the wedding guests as well as the main wedding party. Carole and Stan hosted their ceremony at Archerfield House in East Lothian, with a handfasting ceremony led by a Humanist minister and their guests arranged around them. It was decided that I would make a picture of that scene and build it on a circular canvas that reflected the shape of the ceremony. I gathered reference photos of the happy couple during the ceremony and then took pictures of as many wedding guests as I could get to pose at the time. I then went down to the reception venue and started the painting in full view of the guests. Throughout the day this painting process provided unique on-site entertainment for the wedding guests; I painted the main wedding party first, starting with the bride and groom before painting Carole’s daughters, the best man, the matron of honour, and the parents of the happy couple. People of all ages are fascinated by the process and the openness of how I do it, and wedding guests were constantly hovering around the easel, watching my progress.
Chris took dozens of photographs of the wedding guests, to be painted into the artwork either during the reception or after the event.The painting underway during the reception. Guests were encouraged to stop by to get their photo taken and to watch the progress.
To add to the ambience of my workspace, I brought four large boards of crowd scenes from my 2013 Hogmanay painting. This gave the guests an idea of the direction in which the wedding painting was going.
Chris adding portraits to the painting in his studio in Leith, using photo reference collected during the wedding reception.
After the event the picture was taken back to the studio in Leith and the longer process of painting all the guests in began.
Once finished it was popped in a custom-made frame to be presented to Carole and Stan and hung in their Perth home. Job done!
Last year I spent time painting various spots in The Three Sisters, a famous pub on Edinburgh’s Cowgate. The venue was named after the three Mackinnon sisters Cath, Kitty, and Maggie, famous in the 1740s for gracing Edinburgh stages with their singing, dancing and beauty. It is a large complex of bars, and inside this network of rooms is housed Edinburgh’s Student Union Bar.
The Three Sisters asked me back this year to further improve the Student Union. This time I took on a tired and bedraggled looking corridor which before I arrived, wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 1970s office block. They wanted some new artwork that was very Edinburgh-themed, would energise the space, and had some relevance to the diverse university students who frequent the space.
The main wall in the corridor now has an impressionist vista of Edinburgh with the castle illuminated by the world famous bi-annual fireworks display.
I took the artwork onto the ceiling as well as the walls in order to give the area an immersive feel. As the scene moved further away from the firework end of the corridor, the idea was to give it a ‘starry night’ / Van Gogh inspired look. The ThreeSisters also had me paint the walls at the far end with notable university buildings from around the city.
On a completely different theme, The Three Sisters asked me to reflect the Cowgate location of the bar in another mural. The venue is surrounded by a maze of vaulted arches that hold the buildings of the area up, and so I painted a map to the vaults under George IV Bridge with a pop art/brightly coloured feel.
The whole job was done to deadline in under a week, just after the Edinburgh Festival finished but before the onslaught of students for Freshers Week.
Fingers crossed it will keep the students happy and ultimately lead to increased footfall through the door – always the mark of a successful project for me!
The digital flier for the Christmas event, showcasing the neoclassical Georgian building in which we now work.
Celebrating the Season at Leith Custom House
After six years at my previous studio at St Margaret’s House in Edinburgh, I recently moved to Custom House in Leith; a stunning neoclassical pillared building that is a central landmark on the Leith landscape. After a prolonged period as the National Museums of Scotland’s storage facility, this A-List Georgian building is now being managed by the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust who are encouraging a wide variety of creative people to build a new hive of activity in the heart of Leith.
There are two distinct buildings on the site: a the larger, more grand building situated on the corner of the Commercial Street and the Water of Leith, and the “cruiser” store, located behind the main building on a narrow cobbled lane that has been hidden from view for years. My new studio backs directly onto this lane via an extremely handy loading bay and this provides me with much better access for loading my often bulky murals.
Even more exciting however is the nascent creative community that is burgeoning within the space. The Christmas event on 17th and 18th December was the first open studio day that I’d been involved in at the Custom House since the move and therefore I thought I’d celebrate by undertaking my first live painting event in the new space.
Studio manager Sheila Masson at work covering the walls of the loading baywith an undercoat of emulsion.The loading bay makeover fully underway as it is transformed into a Narnia-themed space.
The large loading bay was an extremely bland and tired-looking area so with the blessing of SBHT Director Una Richards, we set out to give it a seasonal makeover. As our new studio opens directly onto this space, I felt it was extremely important it project the creativity and joy that the new building and its new tenants aspire to. I enlisted my studio manager Sheila Masson – a talented artist (as well as a powerful brain) and we started work on the Wednesday afternoon, priming the space in preparation for our plan.
Sheila and Chris adhering to health and safety during extensive spray work in the loading bay.A gigantic Aslan appears out of the snowy landscape in the loading bay.Sheila flexing her muscles on the scaffolding as she applies spray painted hand-cut stencils late into the evening.
We decided to paint a Narnia themed mural as although there is a Christmas element to the story, it does not define it, so therefore the mural will remain relevant till spring. We spray painted a snowy landscape with a large scale Aslan and the ubiquitous lamp post front and centre. Sheila made a number of beautiful snow stencils that really set the tone and we quickly built an atmospheric frosted landscape.
Detail of some of the stencilling and freehand collaborative work that Sheila and Chris created on the loading bay walls.Detail of some of the stencilling and freehand collaborative work that Sheila and Chris created on the loading bay walls.
Come the main event on the Saturday however it was important that we kept spray paints to a minimum due to the health and safety issues (and the pong!). The alley was filled food stalls and visitors to the building as well as regular Leith Farmers Market shoppers who wandered into the newly revealed space.
Visitors to Leith Custom House wandering through the loading bay and out into Custom Lane, where they could enjoy hot food and do a spot of Christmas shopping.We also set up a stall of our own posters, prints, postcards and t-shirts (also available on our website if you missed out!) which were very popular for Christmas presents.Chris painting life size cut outs during the Christmas event at Leith Custom House.Santa nestled in the loading bay.
Moving on from the spray painted walls I changed my focus to shaped life size characters from the book, cut from large sheets of wooden board. I snared a few tenants and SHBT friends to pose for the The White Witch, her dwarf, Mr. Tumnus and a large scale Santa.
To keep the characters on theme and to compliment the visuals in the loading bay, I reused Sheila’s stencils to add surface detailing. The end result had a vibrancy reminiscent of textile design or a Rauschenberg painting.
Detail of the White Witch’s dress which utilises some of the stencils that Sheila made for the loading bay walls.Stencils drying on the scaffolding during the painting of the loading bay.
The joy for me in collaboration is that every new partner brings fresh tools to the army and in this way Sheila’s stencils and application to the cause really enriched the product and added a further depth and subtlety to my directness and drive.
Interaction between Chris’s freehand and Sheila’s stencilled spray work.Three of the Narnia cut out characters inserted into their virtual stage set in the newly painted loading bay.
The loading bay mural is now established and the plan is to periodically adapt the visuals over the coming months and years. The hope is the magic will be infectious and over the coming years the building will permanently acquire some of the magic of Narnia.
I am currently painting a new mural for the William Street restaurant ‘A Room in the West End’, an Edinburgh establishment downstairs from Teuchters pub. I have dined there a number of times, most recently on my 40th birthday and I know the owner Peter Knight through my long affiliation to Boroughmuir Rugby Club.
The exterior of Teuchters pub in Edinburgh; the Room In the West End restaurant is located inside and down the stairs.
They already had a mural in their cosy subterranean location, but the last time that I dined there I mentioned to Peter that I thought it was looking a little tired and dated. I suggested that they could do with a rethink as it wasn’t adding value to the restaurant. It took a year or so but Peter came around to my line of thinking and agreed to have me fix it for them.
The initial design of the mural for the restaurant walls.
The brief as was to reflect the West End/Central Edinburgh location, to visually push the wall back with added depth, but also make the room look exciting, populous and atmospheric. Ideally the mural would become a talking point and would make the restaurant a destination venue. I decided to combine my signature crowd mural concept with a 12m landscape depiction of Edinburgh’s Old Town, sweeping across the skyline from North Bridge to Edinburgh Castle.
Billy Connolly and Super Gran lurk amongst the well-kent Scottish figures in the mural.
Originally the discussion as to who would be painted into the crowd revolved around the use of regulars, locals and restaurant staff, but also with a strong rugby element as the pub is a haunt of the Six Nations Championship revellers. However the mural has quickly become a nostalgia piece to innumerable Scottish celebrities and the crowd is now a 50/50 mix of celebs and punters, which should result in visitors looking more closely at the painting in order to identify the well-kent faces amongst the lesser-known crowd.
My crowd scenes frequently feature one or two celebrities but largely my focus has been on the general public. In my twenties I worked for as a magazine illustrator, painting for over 30 different magazines and they would often ask me to paint celebrity portraits within the context of editorial illustrations. So working on this mural has in many ways felt like a blast from the past for me.
Scottish musicians The Proclaimers, Shirley Manson and Rod Stewart join in the revelry in the mural.Chris using his ever-present iPad for photo reference during the painting of the mural.
The extra muscle memory from painting around 6000 portraits in the last five years has meant that I have found this task considerably easier than I used to. The internet has improved celebrity photo reference immeasurable – laying hands on good celebrity photo reference is so much easier and allying that with my ubiquitous iPad has allowed the mural to build relatively easily.
Some of Edinburgh’s Old Town buildings depicted in the mural, looming above the ghostly outlines of people whose portraits are waiting to be painted.Scottish singers Susan Boyle, Lulu, and Sharleen Spiteri of the band Texas make an appearance in the mural.Room in the West End owner Peter Knight enjoys the company of Sharleen Spiteri, KT Tunstall and Annie Lennox at his table in the mural.Chris painting the mural in the early days of its progression – the skyline has been completed but the portraits are yet to start.
The only real issue has been negotiating painting time around the comings-and-goings of a successful restaurant. In order to not disrupt the customers’ meals, I’ve had to work in and around the Christmas rush which has meant arriving at 7am and leaving around 2pm. After the initial painting of the Edinburgh skyline, each day by lunchtime I have typically managed to produce around ten portraits.
Painting the first portrait of the mural.Chris consulting his iPad during painting.
My plan is to finish the mural by mid January and launch the mural publicly in time for the Six Nations tournament – hopefully with some more famous rugby faces identifiable in the crowd scenes.
The Oz Bar has been serving Edinburgh for more than twenty years and it has a strong legacy of artwork, including a boxing kangaroo and a few mini murals dotted around the premises. I was asked me to come in and give the place a brand new street art edge, smartening up the main space and toilets whilst retaining the pub’s character.
The ceiling of main bar had already been painted a dark green so I used this as a background for a huge image of a shark and a crocodile in combat. This is so big that you can only read it as you walk through the space.
To complement this and to add clarity, I painted an acrylic picture of ‘pool sharks’ hustling for above their table.
To emphasise the Australian theme we smartened up their signs by giving them an Aboriginal design throughout and also painted a massive new Australian flag as a frame for one of their existing pictures.
The male toilets have the familiar piquant aroma that many pubs can have, so I thought it would be funny to booby trap them with dangerous animals, as though the smell was venom. There is now a large funnel web spider trying to bite customers while they are on the throne and a tiger snake striking at their willies when they are having a wee.
The ladies loos has a gentler feel but perhaps no less dangerous, as it’s been decorated to feel as if you have stepped into a star-clad jellyfish. Both rooms are designed to be an entirely immersive experience.
The end result uses some of the Oz Bar’s well-established artwork to its best advantage, and the new additions blend seamlessly with the old, making it feel like it’s always been that way. Since the project was completed there has been an exponential increase in business – alongside the Edinburgh natives, students and tourists have come in droves and the pub is always lively, but not at the expense of their regulars’ happiness.
The Oz Bar is set for a new and exciting phase of trade and it’s great to know the artwork has made a difference.
