Print: SK5 (School of Michelangelo)
Print: SK5 (School of Michelangelo)
(2022), Oil on Canvas, 100x120 cm
This painting began with a collision between two worlds: the housing estates and backstreets I grew up aroun the monumental bodies of the Italian Renaissance. The figure draws heavily from the Belvedere Torso, a fragment that became foundational to Michelangelo’s understanding of the body as something unfinished, unstable, and alive through tension rather than perfection.
At the same time, the landscape emerges from photographs taken around my old street in SK5. Streetlights, brick, shadows, and suburban thresholds are pulled into dialogue with Renaissance form, collapsing distinctions between the sacred and the ordinary, the historical and the personal.
The work marked the beginning of my deeper engagement with Renaissance painting and sculpture, not as nostalgia or imitation, but as a living visual language capable of carrying contemporary experience. Here, the idealised body of classical tradition is relocated into post-industrial Britain, becoming a site where memory, class, desire, and transformation intersect.
Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl is the paper I use for my archival prints because it preserves the depth, detail, and atmosphere of the original paintings. The surface has a subtle texture and soft pearl finish that gives the prints a luminous quality without looking overly glossy or artificial.
It reproduces colour with incredible accuracy, from deep shadow tones to delicate transitions in light, which is especially important for my work where glazing, sfumato, and layered colour are central to the image. The paper also holds fine detail beautifully, allowing brushwork, surface shifts, and tonal subtleties to remain visible in the print.
As an acid- and lignin-free archival paper, it is designed for longevity and museum-quality reproduction, ensuring the prints maintain their richness and stability over time.