Julian Rothenstein runs Redstone Press out of the ground floor of his stucco house in north Kensington. It’s a one-person operation, and he likes it that way.
On one of the walls, a woodcut by Frans Masereel. A few pictures away, a piece by Julian’s wife Hiang Kee. Julian has known Hiang for more than forty years. They were both part of the beginnings of Bananas, a seventies literary magazine.
Redstone Press, which Julian founded in 1986, grew out of that world. The Redstone Diary is legendary, launched in 1987 and now well into its fourth decade.
Alongside it, Julian publishes two or three original books a year. He edits, designs, oversees the print, and posts the books out himself. On his desk in my picture there is a big roll of brown packing tape. The pale royal-blue blur on the right-hand wall is a stack of Airmail stickers he was reaching for constantly.
I made this portrait in October 2023.
During the visit I drew Julian and his surroundings on paper and on the iPad, and took reference photographs – the same mixed method most of these portraits use. Later I used the paper studies to remodel things I had drawn on the iPad.
I like drawing rooms that already have pictures on the walls. It keeps happening through this project.
Here’s a close-up of the desk and shelves, painted on paper:
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The finished picture at the top of this page is left loose and deliberately half-finished. I went back and forth on how far to take it, and decided to keep the energy rather than smother it with fussing.
Only later, back at my own desk, did I catch up with how eminent Julian’s artistic family was. His parents were both artists: his father the printmaker Michael Rothenstein, his mother the portrait painter Duffy Ayers. And his grandfather was Sir William Rothenstein, who ran the Royal College of Art through the twenties and into the thirties. With hindsight, I felt a little daunted.
But there was no need: Julian was easy company and the day was entirely enjoyable.
This is one of the portraits in Contain Multitudes, my show at Burgh House, Hampstead, 18-23 August 2026.