Notes

Winner of the 2018 Discovery Prize at Art Brussels, Georgina Gratrix is best known for her luscious impasto portraits and floral still lifes. Gratrix habitually fragments or obscures her portrait subjects, but in this frontal portrait of artist Ed Young she opted for ‘straightforward’ representation: ‘The brushwork is more serious, less jokey. I don’t think it is indicative of a phase or shift in painterly style, though.’1 The lot was especially produced for the Cape Town Art Fair and is based on a photograph taken in 2017 at a birthday function for art collector and philanthropist Lady Linda Wong Davies at her home in Kalk Bay. Gratrix has produced a number of portraits of artists, including Julia Rosa Clark, Ian Grose, Jody Paulsen, Rowan Smith and Young, who she has painted twice. Gratrix first met Young when he was her lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in the early 2000s.

Sean O’Toole

1. Georgina Gratrix, pers. comm., interview with Sean O’Toole, Cape Town, 28 November 2018.

Exhibited

SMAC Gallery Booth, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, 15 to 18 February 2018.