The BBC is to broadcast a special documentary on the leading landscape and Royal portrait painter, Fiona Graham-Mackay.
Award winning producer Eve Streeter and her recording team have eavesdropped as Fiona paints the portrait of the former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion.
“It must be a first,” says the artist. “Who else but the BBC would have the imagination to show a painting coming together on radio? And this is just the first.”
The idea came when Fiona’s portrait of the late Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney was unveiled by the Irish poet at the prestigious Athenaeum in London’s Pall Mall. The BBC was planning the documentary on the painter and then suggested linking the poet and the artist in a fly-on-the-wall recording.
“Shortly before his death in 2013, Seamus Heaney unveiled my portrait of him and it now hangs in pride of place at the Athenaeum in Pall Mall London,” recalls Fiona, originally from the Scottish Borders. “It was from this close understanding with Heaney that came the idea for BBC Radio 4 to make a programme with the arts producer Eve Streeter on me painting a famous poet and during the sittings eavesdropping on their conversations.
“When Seamus died, I wanted to carry on the idea with Sir Andrew Motion. He has been brilliant. Eve Streeter and her team really have captured an intimate conversation about two artists working in different areas but often experience the same and sometimes secret feelings and ideas. And this is just the beginning. We plan to come back in the year with me and other writers. After all, there’s plenty to say.”
Fiona, who was a student at the Royal College of Art under the demanding tutelage of the illustrious Quentin Blake, has painted many of the rich and famous including Prince Michael of Kent and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. Her portrait of Prince Michael of Kent is in the entrance to one of Europe’s most famous yacht clubs where he is admiral.
Her painting of the late Baroness Thatcher’s foreign secretary Lord Carrington now hangs in London and will be featured in a new biography of the British statesman.
The programme airs on 30 December and the portrait will not be a mystery. It will appear on the BBC and Fiona’s website on the same day.
