It is so humbling seeing your works come through because frankly you are all more talented than myself and it is therefore a privilege that I get to sell your your neckwear.
I really thank you. I am reposting something I wrote yesterday regarding the competition.
The thing I have always loved about literature is that it gives you a snapshot of a time and a place. At the opening scene of Tolstoy’s the Cossacks he describes the end of the evening and beginning of the morning as servants wait for the officers to finish their cards game and extinguish the candles. It is so clearly written that you are literally in the room.
The same could be said of when I look at a portrait well done, a family one, an aristocrat in his finery, something from an agricultural setting, an idyll, maybe not an idyll, maybe the toil of the land. Whatever it may be that catches your eye, it takes you somewhere, it resonated with you like a moral truth, like music. Done well it expands your human consciousness; it gives you a circumspect that doesn’t require you to climb a mountain. Just sit still. Books, art, films.
One day when you have returned to dust and when everything you thought mattered no longer matters, you will have left something of an impression, small as it may be for most, large and largely irrelevant given enough time, for others. How often to you spare a thought for Andew Carnegie? That’s right. Probably never. What about Roald Dahl? Again, probably never if ever. But your family will be curious. The people that tell stories about you, they will be curious.
That’s why the portrait competition matters. It’s your chance to give them something to remember you by, to capture a moment for them and express who you were at that time, what you wore.
There are 2 days left to submit. I hope you make the most of them.
And let me show you some of the recent submissions:
@ASKEWALWAYS
OLIVER WATTS
JULIETTE GILES
