~ portraits and figures ~

Gig (1994)

Oil on Canvas - (50cm x 60cm)

This painting records a gig by local musicians who called themselves 5000 days, here playing at the Greenbank Project Bar, Smithdown Rd, Liverpool. The scene was sketched on the spot, initially in charcoal on paper, one murky night during the winter of 1993/4. The image was transferred to this atmospheric oil painting the very next day, in the studio on the corner of Crawford Ave, barely half a kilometre away. The band leader Jake, shown playing a guitar on the far right hand side of the painting, needed monies for a trust fund related to a disabled member of his family. The painting was donated to this cause and was subsequently auctioned at a benefit-gig for Jake and his trust fund, at the city's Hardman House Hotel function room, on 25th March 1994.

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"The house on the corner of Crawford Ave was busier than ever. Jake and his band used to come back to it after gigs to wind- down. They’d relax by playing some mellow music until the early hours of the morning. The front room transformed into some type of homage to the Beatles on these occasions. This because Jake would relax by strumming out, not his own work, but some ballads of our heroes Lennon and McCartney The Long and Winding Road one of my favourites. I pressed Jake to play and sing it several times as other visitors requested their favourites too. Jake was like a human jukebox."