Irrational Portrait Gallery — Just another Tim Bradford – writing, illustration, art, other things site

Some wang-eyed pop folk art portraits

by Tim Bradford on November 5, 2010

: © 2010. Peter Lorimer – The Hardest Shot In Football (Or Was That Alan Hinton?) (30cm x 40cm digital print on canvas) Limited edition 50

: Wanting To Be Rivelino (acrylic on box canvas) 2007. Limited edition print available.

: Georgie Best (Superstar) (acrylic on canvas) 2008 – SOLD. Limited edition print available.

: © 2010 Diego Maradona – Shanty Town Shaman (Digital print on canvas, 30cm x 40cm) Limited Edition 50

: © 2010. Jesus! It’s Babs Lord! (Acrylic on canvas, 30cm x 40cm) Limited edition canvas print available

: Visitation on the Boreen (acrylic on canvas) 2007. Canvas prints available – Limited edition fifty

: © 2007. JFK at the GAA (acrylic on canvas) 2007

: I Follow The Blind Dog (acrylic on canvas) – SOLD

: Better Red Than Dead (acrylic on box canvas) 2007 – SOLD

: Maud Gonne Fishing (acrylic on canvas) – SOLD

: (Formerly Known As) The Jesus of Finsbury Park (acrylic on charity shop painting)

: Taoiseach and Awe (acrylic on canvas) 2007 – SOLD

My continuing influences include:

• Egyptian funerary portraits
• old football cards
• Orthodox religious icons
• Venezuelan rustic art
• those blue photos you get in old shop windows
• Holy well decorations
• Irish 'celebrity' pictures
• African barbershop signs
• surf T-shirts
• crap signs
A Bit About the Irrational Portrait Gallery

The idea of The Irrational Portrait Gallery is a personal version of the canon of influential personalities that you'd normally see in a gallery. IPG displays a smaller vision of the world, both more mundane and yet more beautiful than reality - or at least a reality scratched onto paper and canvas by a 40-something caffeine addict.

A fictional art critic writes: "In a way these are personal interpretations of medieval icons, except with 70s/80s footballers replacing Jesus, Mary, God, the saints and all them religious lads."