I first met Kaps when I was working as a designer and he applied to join the business network I was a member of. He’d previously been turned down by other groups probably because he ‘didn’t fit in’. But he was a great member as far as we were concerned.
Kaps is a mathematican and database developer and he featured on one of the posters in a campaign for the UK charity Changing Faces (www.changingfaces.org.uk), which supports people with disfigurements to the face, hands or body, and their families.
Society today seems obsessed with looks and the search for perfection, which is unachievable and probably pointless. Personally I find imperfection intriguing, many artists do. “A major reason his (Rembrant’s) work continues to speak to us centuries after his death—is the human figure, rendered with sensitivity both to the telling imperfections of surface appearance and to the turbulence of the spirit within”.
Oddly, after many years of knowing Kaps, I hardly notice his facial imperfections. However, it’s his eyes that get me, they are really beautiful. I love their blackness and they compelled me to draw of him. This is my first charcoal portrait and I really like the medium, particularly compressed charcoal which is wonderfully black. And I have a thing about black…I forget now but someone said it was only the Spanish artists, like Goya, that could paint black.
For more information contact:
Richard Tomlin
07815 096 933
email richard
www.richardtomlin.co.uk