Kevin Francis Gray at work. Photo: Henrik Sylvest
Kevin talks about his childhood in South Armagh, Northern Ireland, and how the experience of his teenage years coloured his life. He opens up about how his work explores family relationships - sons, fathers and toxic masculinity.
He studied at art school in Dublin and Chicago, before doing a masters at Goldsmiths in London. During art school his work became more sculptural until, soon after graduating, he shifted from painting to sculpture.
Kevin Francis Gray, Reclining Nude II, Statuario marble. Photo: Camilla Maria Santini
When he arrived in Pietrasanta he began by creating traditional classical sculptures with a contemporary twist. However soon he wanted to create something more personal and developed his own abstract, contemporary style of sculpture. He enjoys challenging the stone to do different things.
Kevin Francis Gray, Family Series. Photo: Camilla Maria Santini
His Family Series is a very personal look at his role as a father, husband and man. Son Dancing was inspired by a glimpse of one of his sons dancing freely, unaware of his body, and wearing his mother’s high-heeled shoes.
Kevin Francis Gray, Son Dancing. Photo: Camilla Maria Santini
Reclining Mother was inspired by seeing his wife resting with one of their sons.
Kevin Francis Gray, Reclining Mother. Photo: Camilla Maria Santini
Kevin Francis Gray, Mother and Child. Photo: Camilla Maria Santini
In his studio we see a series called Fragile Heads which are portraits, but very flawed and damaged. This emotionally rich series arose from portraits he created of men he’d seen in passing. He sculpted them roughly, and energetically, and by leaving water inside the clay before firing ensured that the finished pieces cracked and evoked the fragility and tenderness of men.
Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Heads Series
A large piece which caught our attention in his studio was Striding Youth. Kevin explained that his idea in this piece was to use gesture to indicate the confidence of youth, walking out of the block of stone.
Kevin Francis Gray, Striding Youth, Nero Marquinia marble. Photo: Nicola Gnesi
Currently, Kevin is working on a series called Ten Heroes. These are abstract portraits, this time of his lifelong heroes, and we had the chance to see some of them come alive in his studio. So far, this series includes Barbara Hepworth, Samuel Beckett, Charles Mingus and Bobby Sands.
Kevin Francis Gray, Samuel, Calacatta Caldia marble. Photo: Camilla Maria Santini
Kevin likes his plinths to be an extension of the sculptures themselves. They highlight the works in a way that simple white boxes can’t. He uses many types of contemporary materials for his plinths, especially to complement marble sculptures, which might be freighted by the history of the stone.
Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #2 on wooden plinth. Photo: Stefano Maniero
Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #10 on wooden plinth. Photo: Stefano Maniero
Kevin and his wife, Tara, founded Marble Projects to give back to the artist community. As well as offering young local, or international, artists the chance to use cutting edge technology for affordable prices, he helps young artists with a space to work and the chance to learn from the artists in his studio. Pietrasanta has been kind to him, he says, and this is his way of giving back.
Matteo Zeni of Marble Projects in Pietrasanta explaining how artists are using robotic technology to support both workflow and creativity.
Credits
Producer: Sarah Monk
Producer and editor: Mike Axinn
Profile photo: Gail Skoff
Music Credits: courtesy of Audio Network
- Junction Road 2 1623/82 Bruce Maginnis
This new series of work I’m making is called the Family Series’ it’s a real deep personal dive into my role as a father or as a husband, a man and how bad I can be at that sometimes but also how good I can be and you know how difficult it is for us, men and women. I also did this series of porcelain heads which are called fragile heads which are all busts of men’s heads but they’re all broken and quite damaged and there’s some real tender beauty about the heads if you look at them by themselves but also when you look there’s also a real fragility and a real tenderness that I think is really lovely.
Sarah Monk:Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of Materially Speaking, where artists and artisans tell their stories through the materials they choose. Today, we’re with Kevin Francis Gray, whom we first met when he opened up his studio to visitors for our open studio, Giro Dante, last May. He and his team at Marvel Projects was so supportive to the Giro that when we finally got to interview him in December, we were already big fans. As we walk into his huge studios on the edge of Pietro Santa, he comes out to greet us, an imposingly tall figure with a shy smile.
Sarah Monk:Around us is a large collection of his sculptures displayed on a forest of totem pole like plinths carved in different woods. We settled down to hear about his childhood in Armagh, Northern Ireland, and how his teenage years influenced his art. He talks us through some of his themes and opens up about exploring family, sons, fathers, and toxic masculinity. He also tells us about his time as a chef, his drive to give back to the artist community, and some of his childhood heroes. We asked him to introduce himself.
Kevin Francis Gray:My name is Kevin Francis Gray. I’m an artist who lives and works between Pietro Santa and London. I’m a sculptor working predominantly in marble, hence the reason why I’m here. I’m a contemporary artist, and I have galleries all over the world that help represent and work with me.
Sarah Monk:Can we start maybe where you started with your childhood? All I know about you is you were born in Armagh.
Kevin Francis Gray:That’s right. Yes. Born in Northern Ireland in the seventies. So sort of at the peak of what we call troubles, which was the war. I was born in an area called South Armagh, which is quite a how can I say it?
Kevin Francis Gray:Quite a Republican stronghold and lived there most of my life, studied there at school, and then went to art school in Dublin and studied in Chicago as well on a programme and then did my master’s in London in Goldsmiths.
Sarah Monk:Can you tell us a little bit more about your childhood? I was there in ‘79. I do know it was challenging.
Kevin Francis Gray:It’s a really strange one because being born in that environment, being that that’s the only thing you know, it’s not strange at all. It’s completely fine and functional. But when I grew up and moved away and looked at it as a older man, let’s say, I was able to see that, you know, it was actually a very difficult place for a young child to be brought up, a young adult, young teenager. It was very violent, very hard. We lived in a particular area that was extremely political, and it was just a normal run of the mill stuff.
Kevin Francis Gray:But when I look at it now as an older person, it was quite challenging, quite difficult. Yeah.
Sarah Monk:And are you from a big family?
Kevin Francis Gray:Or Yes. There’s six children in our family. Good Irish family. And, yeah, I’m the second oldest from the top. So, yeah, me and my older brother has experienced quite a lot of what was going on.
Kevin Francis Gray:I think sisters were protected a little bit from it because we were, you know, active in a lot of the activities that were going on around going to Belfast, protesting.
Sarah Monk:What were you doing?
Kevin Francis Gray:Throwing stones.
Sarah Monk:The police or the army?
Kevin Francis Gray:It’s it’s so strange to talk about now because it was fun and entertainment when we were young, but it was extremely, like, couched in political uprising and struggle, but it was just what we did.
Sarah Monk:So are there any standout experiences from that period in your teenage years?
Kevin Francis Gray:I think there’s a lot there’s a lot of things that happened when I was younger that impacted on me as a young man. And I guess as I got older, sort of was able to burrow down and look into them, but nothing specific that I’d wanna talk about.
Sarah Monk:No. I understand that.
Mike Axinn:You said something about looking back on it as a grown up in a sense. How did you synthesize that in terms of your sense of who you are?
Kevin Francis Gray:Well, yeah, I think that, you know, our past and our history really forms the humans that we are and we become. I was quite a violent young man, I think, when I was young. But as I grew older and dealt with what happened and what was going on, you know, I’ve definitely changed to become I’m a lover not a hater anymore. So, yeah, so I definitely changed. But when you’re involved in that type of culture that is all about violence and protest and it was all encompassing.
Kevin Francis Gray:It’s very, very difficult to step outside it. But I had an ability to be able to do that with my work as a young artist, so I was able to go to the art room and find sanctuary there. And the teachers that I worked with at the school I went to were extremely supportive. So I was able to find an escape route rather than having to sort of pretend to be this quite sort of machismic macho fighter, which I totally wasn’t. So how did becoming an artist fit into that?
Kevin Francis Gray:Was there space for you to do that? Was there support from your family? Where did that come from? Well, I think, you know, I think the idea of being an artist is a little bit about rebellion in its own sense, protest, rebellion. And I think that art was the only thing I was good at, really.
Kevin Francis Gray:So that was all I could do. That was the only choice I had. There was absolutely no support from my family because my family didn’t really think about our education. My parents, they weren’t really concerned. As long as we went to school and we were happy, that’s all that mattered.
Mike Axinn:I can’t help thinking when you talk about the expression of art about how you said you threw stones and you’re still kind of in a sense.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. That’s the way. And sort of rather than throwing stones, I’m hitting stones. Yeah. Very true.
Kevin Francis Gray:Maybe there’s some deep psychological working through there. But, yeah, definitely, rather than throwing, hitting. Yeah.
Sarah Monk:So when you started art, what were your passions then?
Kevin Francis Gray:Well, when I started painting was pretty much my passion right through until I did my BA in painting and I did my MA in painting. I always say when I graduated from my MA, I realized I was an absolutely terrible painter. So sculpture was the only other port of call, that I was able to go to. But so painting was really what I used as a vehicle for expression, especially when I was young. I look at some of my old paintings in my family home in Ireland, and they’re very, very angsty, like immature but very sincere and beautiful as well.
Sarah Monk:Can you tell us how the bridge came to work in sculpture?
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. So I think that what was happening with my work when I went to Goldsmith to do my MA, the work, the painting became almost more sculptural. On the canvas, it became more three-dimensional. And I find the constraints of two dimensionality very difficult to, like, express myself, but also difficult to manage. And then as I said, when I graduated, then I felt this was the moment to really circle back to the start almost and start to make work the way that I felt would be, and
Mike Axinn:that was immediately sculptural. It’s interesting that that didn’t happen till you had graduated.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. I think I just didn’t realize I was a bad painter until I graduated, if I’m honest.
Mike Axinn:Oh, wasn’t that their job to tell you?
Kevin Francis Gray:Well, you know, art skills are pretty sort of ambiguous areas. But, yeah, I know. I I did very well in my masters. I got a first class, and jesting when I say I was about it. I actually just there was no deep satisfaction or analysis.
Kevin Francis Gray:The type of work I was making would be something I’d be able to sustain. So I felt I needed to change. But then that’s also been a theme throughout my entire career as an artist. I’m constantly changing how I’m working and what I’m working with and the way I work. So I might be a bit impatient and petulant around conforming.
Kevin Francis Gray:So what were the practicalities of becoming a sculptor? Yeah. It was difficult when I was young because, you know, sculpture is big, it’s heavy, it takes up a lot of space, a lot of time. So there was a definite sacrifice I had to make in terms of time and space where I was able to produce a lot less over a number of years as a young artist. But then I also was able to, you know, help support that through working in restaurants and stuff.
Kevin Francis Gray:And then eventually I was able to just focus on my work completely.
Mike Axinn:I’m interested in the restaurant thing just because essentially, you know, you’re working with your hands, you’re you’re sort of sculpting food in a way. Does that impact your work at all?
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. So definitely working in a restaurant as a chef, there’s a real sense of creativity and freedom even though you’re working within quite tight constraints of the theme and the idea of the restaurant. There’s real creativity, But also there’s real camaraderie as well, and that you don’t get as an artist because working as an artist is a very solo, lonely path. So the restaurant had that combination of creativity and companionship that was really wonderful as a young man trying to also build a career as an artist in the studio. So it was really yes.
Kevin Francis Gray:You’re right. It was very sculptural, very, very good fun.
Sarah Monk:Can you tell us which restaurants they were?
Kevin Francis Gray:I used to work in River Cafe in London, and then I was chef at the at Morrow restaurant in London also. But then I set up a supper club, private supper club, after I left Morrow with a friend of mine who’s a painter called Luke Otilia, who’s a brilliant painter and ceramicist. And we set up a supper club that opened a couple of nights a week. It was invite only, so it was for friends and artists and family. And we used to do these beautiful 16 course tasting menus with wine pairing.
Kevin Francis Gray:So it was absolutely amazing. And it was set up in this really old greasy spoon on Hackney Road in East London. So the environment was hideous, but I thought it was really beautiful. The food was really elegant and elaborate. And, yeah, we used to have this brilliant supper club.
Kevin Francis Gray:We did that for a few years.
Mike Axinn:I do feel that you create a tremendous sense of camaraderie even though you say it’s isolated your studio and your team and just the way you work seems to sort of carry that forward.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah, I think working with, I mean, first things first I’m really lucky to work with a really talented group of young artists, artisans, and engineers here in my studio in Italy. A really brilliant young team, and they’re just so phenomenally talented. So that’s a great environment. I’m also I also like to keep my studio open. The door is open all the time.
Kevin Francis Gray:People come by. I don’t I’m not one of these artists that keeps everything private and closed. I like it to be open and people to be able to come. But then also, we have set up this new company called Marvel Projects, which is the the basic fundamentals of the project is to help artists make their work and realise their work inexpensively and, you know, come here and work and have space to be able to experiment.
Sarah Monk:So tell us about your relationship with the younger generation of artists because I know you’ve contributed a lot. Can you tell us a bit more?
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. So the idea with Marvel Projects is what we wanted to do was to be able to have somewhere where young local artists or young artists who are international who are working here and living here for them to have an opportunity to come and use the equipment, the expertise of the artisans who work here, have a free studio space to come and make the work. And we have a program where we’re allowing young artists to come and make their work at cost price, where they get advice around the marble. They’re able to use our tools. We’ve got a big robot.
Kevin Francis Gray:They’re able to use that. And it’s something that I wanted to do because when I was quite young, there was a couple of artists really helped me and I remember thinking if I’m ever in a position where I can give a little bit back I’d like to do that. So Pietro Santa has been incredibly kind to me and very accepting and loving so I think it’s really important that I’m able to give something back to help younger artists. So for example, one of the artists who works for me, she at the minute has got two of her pieces on the robot for free. We’re producing work for her for free because it’s really important that she’s able to continue her own career, but also she wants to work here.
Kevin Francis Gray:So this is an idea we have.
Mike Axinn:Yeah. One of the things you said to get back to your own work is that you sort of, at first, were kind of steeped more in classical classical and figurative stuff because you were trying to, in a sense, kind of prove yourself. And then as you felt more confident, you had this freedom to get into more abstract and conceptual work.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. That’s really true. That’s really true. There was there was a real sense of, I wanna say, insecurity and, like, quite not vulnerable, quite insecure when I first came here where I felt I needed to make this sort of very traditional classical work with a contemporary, like, a a contemporary twist on it. And it was definitely my way of saying, accept me as it were, you know.
Kevin Francis Gray:But then, of course, I realized that, well, that that’s not really how the world works. You have to be true to yourself. So I felt that the work I always really wanted to make was this more abstracted contemporary challenging work, challenging the stone and trying to make stone do different things rather than just these, like, veiled classical seventeenth century type works. And that was a big transition, but of course it was the best move I ever made, yeah.
Sarah Monk:I find your work very emotional. It seems to me that it holds a lot of emotion. Is that your experience when you’re creating?
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah, definitely the work is very, very true to me. It’s very sort of like deep within me, especially for example this new series of work I’m making. It’s called the family series and that’s a real deep personal dive into my role as a father or as a husband, a man, and how bad I can be at that sometimes, but also how good I can be and, you know, how difficult it is for us, men and women. I also did this series of porcelain heads, which are called fragile heads, which are all busts of men’s heads, they’re all broken and quite damaged. There’s some real tender beauty about the heads if you look at them by themselves.
Kevin Francis Gray:But also when you look, there’s also a real fragility and a real tenderness that I think is really lovely.
Sarah Monk:Tell us more about those heads.
Kevin Francis Gray:Every sculpture I make is of someone or it’s someone exists that has been inspired or was a model for the sculpture or whatever. So these portraits are portraits of just men that I’ve seen maybe in passing on my way to the studio or whatever and then I go into the studio and just really quickly sculpt them. They’re sculpted really roughly and really brutally and with lots and lots of energy. And then I leave because of the way you make porcelain, if there’s any water left in the clay when it fires, it cracks. So I’m leaving water in there on purpose so that the heads crack.
Kevin Francis Gray:And that is a sort of a way for me to signal the sort of fragility of these men. The men may not be fragile, but it’s more of a comment on the fragility of masculinity. I think especially now in this moment as well, it’s very relevant because, you know, being a father of young men, it’s really important for me to try and help them find their place because a lot of them are quite lost. So it’s an interesting moment.
Sarah Monk:Very interesting moment and kind of circles back to the particular adolescence you had, which, if I may say so, from a similar generation, there was a different sort of stereotype of what men would be and what women would be, and I could see there’s a different sort of vulnerability nowadays.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. And being a young man in that space who would have been fundamentally quite fragile and quite not a fighter, that was a really difficult thing. So that’s a really beautiful point, actually. That does carry throughout the work even to this most newest work.
Sarah Monk:And on the family series, one of the pieces I loved particularly the name was Dancing Sun.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yes. Tell us about that. Yeah. That sun dancing is a portrait of one of my sons and there was just this moment when I remember when he was young he was dancing and you know that sort of freedom and the way they move their bodies. He was just so free of his body and he was wearing one of his mother’s high heeled shoes and it was just chaos but also pure beauty you know and it was just so elegant effortlessly elegant.
Kevin Francis Gray:So I thought well what a gorgeous like thing that naivety and that sort of freedom and he’s now a young man now but there was something really beautiful capturing that moment. So with the sculpture, I’ve really tried to make that sculpture move. Even though it’s quite rigid and angular, I wanted to make it move really beautifully and freely. So I like this family series. It’s almost like they’re just slabs of marble lent up against each other, but actually they’re all honed from one massive block.
Kevin Francis Gray:These are the fragile heads, the porcelain heads. You see all the cracks and the breaks in it?
Sarah Monk:And what about this piece here?
Kevin Francis Gray:This is Striding Youth. This is a piece that was done in Nira Marquina. This is kind of like what I was talking about with the sun dancing piece, this arrogance and confidence of youth that was trying to depict this young boy walking out of the block, literally leaving the block, and he’s just got this sort of confidence, but also I was trying to do it very abstractly and very, very minimally with gesture.
Sarah Monk:So there’s another one there, I think. Is it Rising Father?
Kevin Francis Gray:Rising Father, yes. So I use the motif of the moon and the crescent a lot in the work and the Rising Father piece is a very personal piece to me and it’s about that middle life change, that crisis point where as a father I felt I needed to rise again like the moon, like the sun, and it’s literally coming through my body and rising out to become a slightly better version of myself. And that’s very much about that idea of crisis, particularly with men in that middle life period. And, you know, we all talk about the midlife crisis, as a joke, actually there is something that really does happen that changes and you can respond to it negatively or positively and that idea of the rising father is the rebirth, the renewing of fatherhood.
Sarah Monk:Great. And mother and child is another one.
Kevin Francis Gray:That’s right. Yeah. That’s a really beautiful, intimate, just small portrait I feel of my wife and one of her sons. It’s just a really tender portrait of a mother and child, but also historically there has been so many portraits and imagery around the mother and child. And I felt that I’ve always taken on some of those bigger tropes like the reclining nude, mother and child.
Kevin Francis Gray:And I really wanted to take on this to show the real vulnerability of the small child with a really strong mother. And I thought it was something really beautiful about the two of them together. It’s very personal work, but yeah.
Mike Axinn:You talked a little bit in one of the interviews about finding the place of stone and marble in contemporary culture as opposed to where it was in the past.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah, it’s very difficult. It’s still an incredibly, I don’t want to say unfashionable, but a very difficult material to place in contemporary art and contemporary discourse around art because it is so weighed down with history and we all are attached subconsciously to the history of it, it’s hard to shake it off. I feel that the work does sort of elbow its way into the contemporary conversation around this material that is so entrenched in history and so weighed down with history. You also said something else which I thought was quite interesting about this responsibility you feel because you’ve actually taken a piece out of the earth? It’s a very conflicting thing for me working in stone because over the last few years I’ve tried where possible not to take anything out of the mountain again.
Kevin Francis Gray:I’m buying a lot of old stone, secondhand stone that’s been lying in yards for years and sometimes I find a real pearl but sometimes it’s mostly rubbish. But I’m trying to fit my work into that type of marble production rather than taking it from the mountain because I’m very conflicted about it actually. Every time I go there, it kind of feels like a wound on the mountain, and I don’t know how that makes me feel. But then I do have to use stone sometimes to come to the mountain. So I feel there’s a responsibility to use as much of the stone that I take as possible and to do something very, very special with it.
Sarah Monk:Sometimes we ask people whether they consider themselves a modeller or a carver, but I see both in your work. Tell us about the different choices of materials, because I see you work in clay, ceramics.
Kevin Francis Gray:I think I would definitely see myself as both a carver and a modeler. I think that working with different materials helps me because of my inability to focus. It’s a great variation because I think that painting, drawing, ceramics, bronze, marb, I absolutely love wood. I love working in all these different materials. It’s kind of my canvas.
Kevin Francis Gray:It’s sometimes working on wood. It feels like just working in a totally different color. You know, white rocks can get very boring after a while. You know?
Mike Axinn:We really kind of were admiring the plinths that you often use for your sculptures.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. Well, plinths have historically always been a very difficult thing for sculptors to get their heads around to understand because we put so much time into the sculpture and then you have to put it on something. And very normally, it’s usually just a white square wooden cube. So I’ve tried to, with a lot of my works, make the plinth part of the sculpture so it’s integral to the sculpture. I think that really shines through because not only does it highlight the sculpture but also highlights a reverence to the plinth that holds the sculpture.
Kevin Francis Gray:So it’s always been really important for me to make sure that the plinths are not just white boxes with sculptures on them. There’s wood, metal, I beams, crescents, plaster. There’s all types of material used in the plinths. I like using materials in a very contemporary way around the plinths whenever the sculpture is marble and it’s quite weighed down with history so it’s quite nice to vary both.
Mike Axinn:A little bit like the restaurant thing with presentation.
Kevin Francis Gray:Oh yeah, good point. There you go. Yeah, the plates, the plating up. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing. We’re plating up sculptures.
Sarah Monk:What pieces of your work would you like to talk about? Which series? Because you change a lot, as you Yeah,
Kevin Francis Gray:I think that each series of work or each body of work I’ve made, there has always been one or two pivotal pieces in that body of work. So the pivotal pieces usually are works that are born very early in the stage, and they’re, like, jumping off points. I would sort of call them the cornerstone pieces in these series, and there’s a few of them around. Yeah. Sundancing would definitely be one of them.
Kevin Francis Gray:And then this Bardiglio Ballerina and Boy would be another one and from that series.
Mike Axinn:Is there a moment in your life that you see or moments that you see as being transformative to you?
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. Definitely, there are moments. It pretty much has always been that moment where I’ve decided to change what I’ve done, to change the body of work I’m doing. I get very impatient, and when something’s going really well, that’s when I usually change it. But I think that’s really important as an artist not to rest too much in your laurels and to keep challenging and pushing.
Kevin Francis Gray:So oftentimes when I’ve decided to change a series of work, it’s just when my galleries are very happy with what I’m doing, so I get in a lot of trouble.
Sarah Monk:Another series was 10 Heroes.
Kevin Francis Gray:Oh, yeah.
Sarah Monk:Barbara and Samuel.
Kevin Francis Gray:That’s right.
Sarah Monk:Tell us about them.
Kevin Francis Gray:This is a new a very new series I’m doing, which are these panels again, but a different type of way, more abstracted, more sort of angular. And they’re portraits. I’ve done portraiture all my life because they’re portraits of people, but I’ve never really took on the idea of doing a portrait, a actual portrait. So I am doing this series of 10 panels of my heroes. It’s really juvenile.
Kevin Francis Gray:It’s very sort of teenage boy bedroom type sort of not posters, you know? I don’t know about you posters of your heroes off in your wall in Yeah. Your own Yeah. As an athlete. Yeah.
Kevin Francis Gray:There you go. Right. Okay. Yeah. And so I thought there was something really lovely in the naiveness of actually as an old man trying to do a portrait of my heroes because of course, know, one should never meet one’s heroes.
Kevin Francis Gray:But I wanted to do this and yeah. So I’ve chosen these 10 people that I’ve been inspired by who’ve moved me from when I was a young boy until still moving me.
Sarah Monk:So who Barbara and Samuel?
Kevin Francis Gray:Barbara Hepworth is one of the my and then Samuel Beckett.
Mike Axinn:Beckett, a hero of yours when you were young. When did you discover him?
Kevin Francis Gray:I discovered Beckett when I was about 16, maybe 17. I went to see a play. I remember going with a girlfriend of mine and trying to really pretend to be really intelligent and, you know, impress her. And it was the most confusing off the charts play I’d ever seen in my life. Yeah.
Kevin Francis Gray:But it was absolutely mesmerizing, completely moving. And then I got quite obsessed by him after that. Nice. Do you wanna look at Samuel? Yeah.
Kevin Francis Gray:Okay. Let’s get him out.
Mike Axinn:I’m a big fan.
Kevin Francis Gray:This is one of the portraits from the 10 heroes series, and this is the plaster of Samuel. So you can see I still use the motif of the crescent. I don’t know if you can see that.
Sarah Monk:Mhmm. Yes.
Kevin Francis Gray:And then this is his profile. Can you see his beautiful nose and his lips? Oh, yeah. And his big chin? Yeah.
Kevin Francis Gray:And then this would be an eye. He’s always like wrinkled forehead and slightly annoyed with the work.
Mike Axinn:Did he ever smile? Probably never.
Kevin Francis Gray:Don’t think so. I don’t think so. Definitely no depiction of him smiling. But as you can see, it’s very abstracted, but then you just start to notice like you have these beautiful big ears, which I always thought were really gorgeous, so you can see his ears here. So you can just start to see little vignettes, little traces of his actual portrait.
Sarah Monk:And the final piece is in marble?
Kevin Francis Gray:The final piece is sculpted in marble. Yeah. We finished it, and it’s in a gallery in Milan.
Sarah Monk:Are those two the only ones you’ve done so far? Or have you
Kevin Francis Gray:It’s an ongoing. Yes. I’ve done one, a portrait of Bobby Sands, who was one of the hunger strikers who died in troubles. Charles Mengus is another hero of mine. He’s an incredible musician.
Kevin Francis Gray:I’m working through it at the minute. I’m just taking my time. It could be a bit of a lifelong project. Yeah.
Sarah Monk:That’s wonderful.
Mike Axinn:Yeah. It gets back to what I think you were saying earlier, which was really, really moving about how difficult it can be for the males of our species to sort of integrate into this world. And you talk about this young boy’s room. It’s kind of really interesting.
Kevin Francis Gray:Yeah. It really is, you know, circling back to that moment of when you had your walls covered with these people who beautiful lives and it was just completely beyond your comprehension of this hero worship of a type. But these portraits now I’m doing, there’s something much more mature and honest about trying to capture a likeness or a portrait. It’s not a likeness because they’re very abstract, but also a reverence and respect not only to the artists who I’m depicting, but also to me as a young man with pictures of Samuel Beckett in my bedroom. They’re very abstracted, which I love because that’s very Beckett to try and find the portrait in the abstraction.
Kevin Francis Gray:But there are little vignettes of them. For example, Barbara’s, she used to wear this pearl necklace and I’ve sort of depicted the pearl necklace slightly. So and Beckett’s beautiful big nose as well.
Mike Axinn:He was a striking figure.
Kevin Francis Gray:He was. Yeah. He certainly was.
Sarah Monk:Do you have any advice for your younger self?
Kevin Francis Gray:Oh, what a lovely question. Yeah. I would probably oh god. I don’t know. So much advice.
Kevin Francis Gray:But really, the main piece of advice would be just don’t be so earnest. It’s okay. It’s it’s gonna be okay.
Sarah Monk:So thanks to Kevin Francis Gray. You can find out more about him on his website, kevinfrancisgray.com, or on Instagram, kevin francis gray studio. As always, there are photographs of the works we’ve discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com, and Instagram at materially speaking podcast. If you enjoy Materially Speaking, please join our community. Sign up to our newsletter, which you can find on our website, to hear more about new episodes and our special events.
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