Facing up to life itself

IT'S no accident that human faces have featured so prominently in the history of art.

From cave painting to Lucian Freud, from Roman heads to Rembrandt, physiognomy has been a significant feature of draughtsmanship and sculpture for good reason.

The human face is not only artistically alluring, it also bears the imprint of life itself. It is the shop window of the soul.

No, surprise, therefore, that I keep returning to the human face for inspiration. Along, with fish, birds, and urban scenes, it provides me with fertile ground for exploring my fixation on shapes and form.

Hence this picture, Faces in a Crowd, which I drew this week.