A commission came in asking for an abstract portrait of a Mother and her two grown up daughters, Some story about each was provided and I asked each person to send me three words describing herself (one of the words to be less than flattering.) I asked each also to send me three colours that they respond well to, cut out of a magazine (nothing electronic because tones are too difficult to match). They sent the stuff and I started the research.
Three women in a play was not difficult to find - I was thinking of three family members in a confined setting - a family, lockdown, and Come and Go, a play by Samuel Beckett emerged as being just that. The play is only 2 minutes odd long, and left the watcher begging to know the stories of the three women. I was made to think of the sibyl - the ancient prophetess women who lived in the mountains of NW Italy before the birth of Christ. They were storytellers as well and I found their fabulous portraits on the ceiling of a chapel in Siena. I drew them again. I gave them hats as were worn by the three women in the dramatisation of the Beckett play that I watched. I got my own daft vintage hat and altered it with the trappings and the fragments of the women's lives that I could glean from their stories. Then I wore the hat, and I drew and painted and was so immersed in the material that before long I had done the commission, and had enough material to work towards a new exhibition. Bring on the identity portrait commissions. This is the way I love to work.