In December 2015 I was asked by Sir Peter Carr if I would paint his portrait. It would hang in his home and also be used as the book cover image for his autobiography to be published this summer. Sir Peter has held many senior positions in the public sector including twenty six years with the NHS and is still working in his eighty sixth year.

He is now suffering from Parkinson's disease and it wasn't possible to paint him from life which is my usual way of working as he tires easily. However I was able to spend a lot of time with him over two months and could observe and sketch him as well as working from photos. The framed painting will be delivered to him later today.

I wanted to contrast the textures of flesh with his suit so I added beeswax to the paint to create heavy impasto for the flesh, and paint thinned with turps for the material of his suit, wiping away the paint for the highlights to create a wide vocabulary of marks following the example of Rembrandt.