The first time that I saw Harvey and Lauren together I knew that I had to paint them. I feel that my hyperrealism portraits allow me to fill a portrait with emotion and the dominant emotion that I felt when I saw these two together was love. They looked out for each other, they loved each other.
I met Harvey and Lauren in 2019. They were sat outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square London. I got to know them both and learnt their story as to how they had ended up homeless.
I got the impression that they were clinging on to the only thing that they had left which was hope and they were waiting for something to happen, maybe an escape from the tough and traumatic world that they were enduring.
What really hit me as I spoke to them both was who was going to come and help them? That is why I titled the painting “Waiting For The Ginger Bread Man”, they were waiting for someone that did not exist to help them.
I wanted to paint “Waiting For The GingerBread Man” in a realism style digging deep with detail. I wanted to create a complex portrait that was a documentary of the consequences of poverty, the loneliness, the fear and also the hope.
I primed the canvas in red paint and started building the layers of the oil painting initially using large brushes and gradually decreasing the size of the brushes until I used single hair brushes for the smallest of detail. I painted the background as a make believe world, the world of the gingerbread man, a world where someone would come along and help them. In the meantime their love gave them their hope.
