Portrait of Mary Ann Sieghart In Her Office / 4 of 4
As promised, the portrait as it stands:
It’s relatively low-res, for optimised email delivery.
[ Remember, these pages you’re reading were initially published to go out as daily emails. ]
I hope that:
- It gets through to your inbox OK
- It doesn’t look too pixelated.
As you see, it’s not the whole picture of Mary Ann in her office, because at the time of writing I haven’t done enough of the detail around her.
Much of the value of the finished picture will I hope be found in the stories that come out of the various items in the room where she does her work.
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So what can you see here?
Well, I already mentioned the daffodils, which came from Mary Ann’s garden.
She brought them into the room and put them on the desk after I’d been drawing for a little while. So they’re obviously important to her.
The red artwork you see here, resting on the cardboard box, was by Mary Ann, as was the one behind the unfinished sofa.
What else?
In a corner, tucked almost out of sight under a table, I noticed a bag filled with balls of wool.
The first time I met Mary Ann, I was a guest on her BBC World Service radio show. I was there to talk about my book Sew Your Own. Believe it or not, the book was about trying to save the planet by making my own clothes.
It made me very happy to see those balls of wool in Mary Ann’s office.
As I’ve made perfectly clear already, Mary Ann has done many Big and Important Jobs in public life.
She also knits.
In fact, she knitted the jumper she’s wearing in this picture.
She told me when I was with her in Wiltshire that she’d missed a few stitches, but honestly I couldn’t see any mistakes.
You’ll notice that I haven’t finished Mary Ann’s hands, or the chair. But I did get to work on the knitting: the cable pattern, and the ribbing at neck and waist.
Drawing these details took me back to my own knitting triumphs.
And you don’t get to say that very often.
When I’ve finished, I’d like to ask her about some other things not visible here, including a shelf of books (at least some of them) by her father, and a drawing he made when he was young.
It’s on the windowsill behind the daffodils.
You may be able to glimpse it in this (sorry, rather low res) GIF:
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I loved writing about my portrait in real-time
I’m going to do this kind of thing again, and would be delighted if you feel like opting into those emails.
In the meantime, please take a look at some of my other Portraits of Interesting People In Their Offices.