As from some therapy there are withdrawal symptoms on the other side as well. Not everyone of course is willing to come twenty times to an untidy room in Peckham for what after all is quite hard work, yet those who do invariably tell me that they enjoy the experience. Busy people especially find it makes a wonderful alibi for two hours of comparative idleness. When making portraits I have no procedures to lean on nor worked out plans of attack. The nearest thing I have to a strategy is my own incompetence.
Weariness relaxes posture into a naturalness that is difficult to achieve in an alert state.
No artificial pose or manner can be sustained by a sitter through months of painting, as it can for the camera' instant, nor can any shield of vanity be held up that long. All I can do is to make a contract with my sitters that they should turn up as regularly as their life allows, wearing approximately the same things, and that I should paint them as best I can. I rely on the conjunction of the two selves to throw up ideas for the work as it goes along. It is a collaboration. I try to learn their faces.