Casa Das Historias

I recently took a five day sabbatical from Stephen Einhorn and went to visit some lovely friends in Estoril in Portugal. We went to see the really beautiful Paula Rego Museum Casa das Historias, in Cascais. It’s absolutely stunning and being a bit of a fan of Paula Rego, I managed to worm my way in and see the Victor Willing retrospective being hung. The exhibition is open until 2nd January 2011 and I highly recommend it. I found it very inspiring. How does a painter manage to paint such huge canvases so full of craft and passion and still be able to see what he is creating so close up? It is not until you step away from the paintings that you realise the skill that is required to put down on canvas what is in your head on such a large scale. Apparently some painters used very long brushes in order to see more clearly what they were doing, this makes more sense to me but I would imagine gave some of the artists using this tecnique severe arm ache! My favorite pictures in the exhibition, are paintings of heads that Victor Willing did while he was ill with MS. He was lying on his back while someone held the canvasses above him in order for him to carry on painting . The self portrait he did is absolutely beautiful, imagining himself as an old man of 70. Sadly he died when he was 60.