I had my portrait painted this week. Quite an experience. My
friend Lucy has been trying to persuade me to sit for her for some
time now. Had I known how phenomenally talented she is, I'd
have agreed straight away. To produce, as she did, a portrait in
oils in under two hours, that not only bears a passing resemblance
to the model, but is also something I'm rather keen to hang on my
wall, is no mean achievement as far as I'm concerned. But what I
found really fascinating is that artists such as Lucy can see
colours that ordinary people like me cannot.
About halfway through I'm allowed a break. In a very sunny
studio I'm in serious danger of falling asleep. I get up for a
sneaky peak. The canvass is an impressionist-style mass of colour
daubs and my hair appears in dozens of glorious copper shades. The
face is in outline only but it's unmistakably mine. I'm
unexpectedly impressed. And very curious.
'Now, what made you put those blue/greys in the bottom left hand
corner,' I say, 'and then that patch of yellow cream above it?'
'Well, it's there,' replies Lucy, as though I'm a bit of a
half-wit. I look at the patch of white linen armchair I've
been sitting in. I blink. And look again. Nope, where Lucy sees
blues, greys, yellows and warm creams, I see shades of white. And
not only does she see these shades and tones that I can't, she can
reproduce them, in seconds, from just six basic colours.
Fascinating.
'Do you think you should be able to see my earrings?' I ask. I'd
worn my diamond studs specially. 'It's not painting by committee,'
she replies, in a testy sort of way. I suspect she wants me to sit
down again. So I do. And she goes back into painting mode. Which is
intense, very focused and, actually, a bit scary.
Normal Lucy is zany, bubbly, funny and, I swear, can talk the
entire rear end off a donkey in under ten minutes. Artist Lucy is
silent and serious, refusing to talk, except to bite my head off if
I yawn or move my hair. I start thinking about people in their
natural element, how they can be quite different to the folk we
thought we knew.
Which is particularly relevant at the moment because I'm racing
to finish the second draft of book four: my favourite to date, but
the trickiest to get right, mainly because of the dual-nature of
the protagonist. Lacey Flint is a young, hard working detective
constable, hiding a secret that could destroy her life. Presenting
two sides of the same person, without revealing too much to the
reader too early in the book, is proving something of a
challenge.
I'll be forced to take a break the next couple of days. I'm off
back to the frozen north on a PR tour. I'll be speaking at both
Blackburn and Haslingden libraries and will be a guest on BBC Radio
Lancashire's Sally Naden show. I've also been invited to drop
into my old school. Imagine, nearly thirty years on and being
called back into the headmaster's office. Now that, will be an
interesting experience.