Chantal Joffe doesn't want you to look at her. I sat for the first time for the artist in March 2023, her studio By the regent canal in Islington, London. Joffe is not interested in the portrait as a global interrogation, the artist looking at the subject and vice versa. My gaze could be on the side, so that it can continue to paint.
I was grateful to have the chance to sit down. My father, Tony Porter, had died six days before, unexpectedly, 77 years old. It has been nine months since my mother's death, Pat Porter, also 77 years old. The two were artists, and they met at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in the early 1960s. I sat for portraits all the time for them when I was a child. It was so normal for me that I did not question it, even if it was an endurance test. Today, I am grateful for this early practice to be motionless.
Joffe and I had already reprogrammed the date of my session. I knew I could cancel. But, a few days before, I sent him an email. “Are you still free Tuesday?” I wrote. “I think I'm going to appreciate it, and seated brings me in one way or another.”
Mourning was a shared experience between us. Joffe had also recently lost his two parents. I wanted to be with my sorrow, rather than hiding or denying it. I had seen friends being subject to parental sorrow, unable to face it. I wanted to find another way to pass. Thus, a series of seven portraits of this spring and summer, about to be exhibited for the first time at the new Joffe solo fair in The Exchange in Penzance, Cornwall. The exhibition is called The princeJoffe's first to focus on masculinity.
This first painting, “Charlie 1” (2023), is of barely contained raw emotion. My right eye is alert, but my left eye is as if he was only looking inward. My skin is both blushed and sallow, betraying the tremors of the sorrow I felt. I can see something else too: my curiosity in the face of what is happening on the canvas. I seem to want to sneak myself and take a look at what Joffe was doing.
At the end of the session, Joffe said something like “we are finished for today”. I had not yet learned that it really meant “the painting is over”. We managed that I sat the following week again, and I presented myself with the same clothes. But the easel was installed in a new position, the chair was different and it was ready to start a new work.
The sessions followed a similar pace. For about the first hour, we chatted while she was painting. Then, after a tea break, the next hour would become more concentrated, both for Joffe in his work and I in my thoughts. The conversation fell.
But the conversations that we have established helped me. At the time, I ended my book Do not bring clothes: bloomsbury and fashion philosophy (2023), in which my sorrow had become a story. During the second session, Joffe and I talked about inevitable changes in the dynamics among brothers and sisters after parental death, and awareness that sorrow can also be understood as an inevitable period of change. Once the painting is finished, I went to the National Gallery, I sat in front of a Monet and I was able to write the post-scriptum on my book, on the death of my father.
At the time, I started to made My own clothes. Most of what I was wearing for these portraits that I did myself. For my father's funeral, I sewed a jacket based on the Japanese Hanten style. I wore the jacket for my next session with Joffe. In the work “Charlie – Fune funerary (Hamlet)” (2023), I seem the most autonomous, wrapped with crossed legs, arms crossed on top of each other. It was an end and a start.
For me, this is painting. I am not interested in the portrait to flatter an idea of myself, but to get involved in the act of art. I find that it nourished and energizing to sit for Joffe. His studio is an accumulation of things: books, paintings, magazines, cups, packaging, art materials, papers, all stacked everywhere. For me, it is not a mess, it is a creative spirit triggered. Inside, there is always order. Before arriving, the next portrait will be organized, ready to start.
Joffe works quickly. His palette is a table, topped and intended for computers. Around its edge are large oil paint globes. Its front, approximately where a computer keyboard is, is the place where Joffe mixes colors, perpetually wiped into a semicircle, like a wiper. Joffe only uses linseed oil, no turpentine.
His energy changes with each work. Sometimes Joffe is exclamation, lively, physical. Other times, its rhythm is more reflective, and it can be so calm behind the easel that I almost forget that it is in the room. She responds to the way I am in this session, as well as what is happening in her own life. The resulting work captures everything that is present in the room. The image of me is accessory to painting itself.
The first time I sat for Joffe, I remember that she said when I left: “I would also like to paint you naked.” As I did not answer, I may have smiled, but the thought remained with me. Recently, I started sitting again for her, after a break of almost two years. In these new paintings, I'm naked. So far, I have sat for four – one per week – two lying on a bed, a seated on his edge, a standing. The challenge is the offender, the elimination of the clothing layer, the gift of vulnerability.
Joffe's invitation to be asked bare has opened possibilities for both of us. For Joffe, these are the paintings that can be made from my strange, large and gangly flesh. For me, that's what I think and that I feel for myself. I am 51 years old – it's time to push in new territories.
May 15-November 1 November, Nouvelynartgallery.co.uk
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