High Viz

A persistent theme/subject matter in my work is the High Viz vest or jacket. As well as being visually striking, it presents an exciting artistic challenge. Firstly there’s the task of trying to create the illusion of luminous colour in regular oil paint, but also, and more fundamentally, making a conventionally quite garish colour harmonise, or at least seem to work with the overall colour palette.

Beyond the mere visual qualities, I have become interested in the connotations that the jacket holds. Despite being worn for visibility, the jacket gives the wearer an anonymity and almost ‘invisibility’. People rarely see past the superficial veneer of authority, and the associations of ‘the worker’. This body of work hopes to cast a more personal light on the subject.

Other portraits