Shani Rhys James Rolf on Welsh Art


Shani Rhys James

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I am on a wonderful Welsh adventure, as I discover more

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about four outstanding artists influenced by this great land.

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During the series, I will be creating paintings inspired by their work.

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I am going to have to paint in ways I have never done before and at the end of it,

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I will probably turn to you and I will say,

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"Can you tell what it is yet?"

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Every time I cross the border into Wales, my heart leaps up.

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It's almost as if I'm coming home.

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I'm off now to meet a fellow Australian, artist Shani Rhys James,

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and she has chosen to put Wales right at the centre of her creative life.

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Like me, Shani is an Aussie.

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She was born in Melbourne in 1953, but when she was nine, she and her mum left Australia for London.

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Shani specialises in amazing autobiographical portraits.

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Some are especially inspired by what she remembers of her early life back in Oz.

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These powerful paintings make her one of the most exciting living artists working in Wales today.

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Shani's dramatic self-portraits are celebrated the world over,

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but if I am to get to grips with her style, I think I'm going to need to do a bit of soul-searching.

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This could be my most dramatic challenge yet!

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Shani's paintings are deeper and more intense than mine, and they're all inspired

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by her own personal experiences, whereas I paint exactly what I see.

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When I do my Shani-style self-portrait, I'll be painting in a way I'm not used to,

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and to paint something as good as these, I'll have to try and understand

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the influences of my own family history and how it has affected my own work,

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so I'll also be going on my own personal journey and revisiting the story of my own Welsh clan,

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the Harrises.

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I can't wait to meet Shani and see her latest work.

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She lives near Welshpool in rural Powys in this stunning house.

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-HE LAUGHS

-How lovely to meet you!

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Lovely to meet you, too! This is amazing!

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Paintings, paintings, I want to see your paintings!

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All right, off we go!

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'What I like most about Shani's paintings

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'are the vivid colours and the intensity of the characters she creates.'

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It's a little bit crowded.

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'This is the first time I've been to see where they all come together in her studio.'

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How nice to have a bit of space like this!

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-Is that from Australia?

-Yes, that's an Australian memory one.

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Gosh, it looks so Australian,

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-doesn't it, this...

-Well...

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..far-distant chunk of blue and going off and off and off.

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Gosh, you do some BIG stuff, don't you!

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What I'm interested in is really getting like under the skin.

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It's not necessarily my head, I'm just looking at like a landscape,

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so I'm doing it like a landscape and I'm just sort of seeing like the surface of the head,

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and it's the paint becoming the skin and...

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I don't follow the process. Are you looking in a mirror to get this?

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Yes. I use my hand mirror for all the portraits I do.

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You can see how grotty it is.

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You can hardly see your face, but it gets covered in paint in the course of...

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Suddenly, I'll realise one day that I can't actually see any more,

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so I'll give it a clean, or get another one!

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In fact, I nearly bought another one!

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The back of it, all covered in paint!

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You should see the other ones!

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It looks like my joint - paint everywhere!

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Do you still feel that your early years in Australia

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impress upon your painting now?

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I feel that that early time in Australia is just the most important...

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Yeah, I do feel it's very important, very important.

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What age were you when you left?

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-Nine.

-Oh, oh!

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But, you see, there was never any rite of passage, because we were going to go back after a year.

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We had the return ticket

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and mummy sold it

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and we hitched around Europe

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and we could never get the money back to go.

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And you still have that memory?

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Those memories, those early memories, are almost the strongest thing you base your whole life on,

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because it's like how you were, what you were in essence

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when you were little and how you felt so strongly and, maybe, arrested development.

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-I've sort of stayed at, sort of like, ten, forever!

-HE LAUGHS

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Like my dad, Shani's father was Welsh.

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Shani moved around from place to place with her mother after leaving Australia.

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They emigrated to England so Shani's mum could follow her dream of becoming an actress.

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They eventually settled in London, where Shani spent the next 20 years.

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How did you come to end up in Wales?

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We came here really because of the children.

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You wouldn't think, "Ooh, I'm in East London now, where all the artists are,

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"I know, I'm going to go to Wales and live in the middle of nowhere,"

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but, you know, career move, but it was for the kids, you know, because I saw my kids

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wandering around East London with their little faces like drooped

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at exhaust level when they were in a pushchair, no trees, nothing,

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and unbeknownst to me, suddenly I could paint and I loved it here and it was like my soul home.

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-How nice is that!

-My soul home.

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Good for you! When did you know you wanted to be an artist?

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Well, when I was about eight. I might have even been seven, actually.

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It never occurred to me that I would be anything else!

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I would say, at the age of three and four and so forth,

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"I'm going to be an artist," and then I would pause for effect and say,

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"And a good one!"

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-Oh, really!

-You know!

-Oh, goodness!

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I've got to do a painting

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In the style of this lady from Wales called Shani Rhys James.

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-Oh, the name rings a bell.

-So how would you suggest I go about it?

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What scale are we thinking here?

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Well, I could do one little like that, or I could do a huge one.

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Yeah, well, I might stick, if I were you, with the...

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Stick with the small one?

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'I think doing a small self-portrait will be difficult enough for me to tackle!

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'I know even Shani finds the larger pictures challenging.'

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-There you go.

-That's lovely!

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'And I still need to learn more about her work.

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'I've really got to get to grips with how she manages

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'to bring her imagination alive so vividly on the canvass itself,

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'and so Shani has arranged some of her pictures for me to see.

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'She is hugely talented.

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'Her paintings are exhibited around the world and she has won art's top award,

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the Jerwood Prize, as well as a gold medal at the National Eisteddfod.

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Scraped through... What do you use to scrape that?

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Well, I use a pallet knife, yeah.

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I love the red,

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that the background is painted over the red, coming through.

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-That's it there, scratching it through.

-Gorgeous, yeah.

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I often work with layers like that, yeah.

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That painting, I'd have started off with an eye or something!

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Very apprehensive look she's got.

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-Well, yeah.

-What does the future hold for me?

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That was in the Royal Academy last year, hanging.

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The eyes are the powerful things, aren't they? In all your paintings, the eyes. They grab you, bang, bang.

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Is this your mum?

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Well, this is a funny one, just looking at it now, actually,

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I'm thinking, it could be me and my mother or it could be me grown up...

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Turning into a woman.

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Yeah, turning into a woman,

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and also there's that sense of rootlessness that me and my mother have had in a way,

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this whole business of being catapulted out of your country of origin

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and in a way forever searching for those roots, but as an artist,

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you are always, in a sense, an outsider, you know, you are.

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What does nationality mean to you?

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I certainly don't feel English.

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I don't feel foreign in Wales,

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because actually, I feel very much taken to the Welsh heart in many ways,

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I do feel the Welsh are very fond of me.

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Australian, well I've only been back once, but I certainly, like, I seem to click with you

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and there is a bond, you know, that you feel straightaway,

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you don't need to, sort of...

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-Don't have to explain anything.

-No.

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-It's good.

-Sometimes, I think people find my paintings too confrontational and in-your-face.

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-I'm sure.

-You know.

-There's no half-measures, is there!

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No, so for that reason, I don't know what I feel!

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It's a magic face, that, looking-around, you know, over-the-shoulder look,

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yeah, that's good.

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I love those piercing eyes.

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'I've been snapping away with my camera in the hope

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'that these images will help guide me when I do my self-portrait later.

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'I do feel I have learnt lots about Shani's technique...

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'..but, taking Shani's lead, I need to find out

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'how MY family ties shaped me as an artist.'

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Talking to Shani,

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I realised what a huge influence her childhood and her family history have had on her art

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and so I thought, maybe I should head back to my Welsh artistic roots,

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maybe lay myself bare, if I'm to try and create

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a self-portrait unlike anything I have ever done before,

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so I'm heading south to Merthyr.

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I'm in the South Wales Valleys, where my grandfather lived and worked as a professional artist.

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I need to find out what motivated him, just like Shani's family,

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to leave his home and emigrate to the other side of the world.

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George F Harris left South Wales for Australia 90 years ago.

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Here we are in Merthyr High Street.

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My grandfather, George F Harris, and his father

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had a very successful photographic and portraiture business here.

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Of course, that's long gone, but people still fondly remember

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Harris Photographer, 88, the High Street.

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Merthyr is a very different place today from when my grandfather lived here in the late 19th century.

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It was once a boom town, growing rapidly

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due to the success of the local steel and coal industries.

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My granddad was in demand

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with well-off customers who wanted him to do their portraits.

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The rich would have him do oil paintings

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and the rest would have to make do with far cheaper photographs.

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These images of the time are fantastic, aren't they?

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I'm here at Cyfarthfa Castle, which has a collection of my granddad's work.

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It's amazing, isn't it, that over 100 years, ago my granddad was using a convex mirror to paint

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his portrait and I'm reminded instantly of Shani Rhys James

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and the way she used a mirror, a portion of a mirror,

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looking in it at her facial features to put it in.

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He didn't obviously come that close to the mirror, but that convex shape of the mirror

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shows the whole of the surroundings and curves everything and you see

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the edge of the easel is curved because of the curve of the glass

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and he's sort of distorted everything

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and I guess he was well ahead of his time for that sort of painting.

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1909, it's lovely - I'll keep that in my mind

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when I do my self-portrait in the style of Shani.

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It's lovely.

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'Castle curator Scott Reid has found some fantastic family photographs.'

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Talk me through all this, Scott.

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Well, in essence, this is a snapshot

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of your grandfather's business in Merthyr

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and, of course, when they first came,

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they were primarily photographers.

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Your great-grandfather, Cleopas Harris,

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when he first turned up,

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he advertised himself as part of the American school of photography,

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because the Americans picked up photography

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much more quickly than everybody else,

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-and here we've got some examples of a family.

-They're great, aren't they!

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Yes. This is a family called the Atkins,

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and you can see he's put them in poses,

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he's used various props while they're taking photographs,

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and this shows how artists and photographers merged.

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In fact, most of the early photographers

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started out as artists.

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I've just caught this -

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"Oil portraits from 30 shillings!"

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Oil paintings were seen as a quality mark,

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so what he would frequently do for better-off people

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is he would take their photograph first

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and then he would actually use

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a glass lantern slide and project the photograph onto a canvas

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and then just paint it off like that.

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They're still using that today, aren't they,

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projecting from slides onto canvas and then painting it?

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And what about this book?

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Well, this is actually the first tourist guide for Merthyr Tydfil,

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done in the 1890s,

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and your grandfather actually took the photographs for the guide!

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Here, we've got a lovely little one of Victoria Street in Merthyr.

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Here, we have one that your grandfather took of Cyfarthfa Castle.

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Oh, yes. Good shot, isn't it?

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Oh, yes!

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Oh, wow!

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This one here is of the lower High Street in Merthyr, with the crowds bustling all over the place.

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While I'm here in Merthyr, I'll be calling on some old friends,

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the Dowlais male voice choir.

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'I'm going to sing some songs that take me right back to my childhood in Perth, Western Australia.

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'I also want to discover if the guys or their families know anything at all about my grandfather.'

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# Father knew Lloyd George. #

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I couldn't help myself! There, you've just reminded me!

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I believe your mother actually knew my grandfather?

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Well, she remembers him from when she was probably about eight or ten,

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and she described your grandfather as a very dapper gentleman.

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He obviously had a reputation for being well-dressed, like yourself.

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-Have you seen my shoes! Get off!

-LAUGHTER

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Apparently he was famous. Not famous, "notorious", perhaps, is a better word.

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People would say,

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"He wears a brown velvet smoking jacket in the daytime"!

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LAUGHTER

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And that would have been sinful!

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Yeah, and he used to paint in a brown velvet jacket with a homburg and a tie!

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How he kept them clean I don't know. If he's anything like me, I paint over everything I own!

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I was reminiscing a little bit about when I was a kid,

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I learnt all the songs parrot-fashion, you know?

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Because we used to go to the Cambrian Society every Tuesday night

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in Perth in Western Australia and I didn't know what that meant,

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but I learnt all these wonderful songs,

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and suddenly, one day, my dad, he said, "I'm going to stop this.

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"We're not going to go to the Cambrian Society any more, we're Australians,

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"and that's it, we are Australians now,"

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and so that suddenly stopped when I was about nine,

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and I find that it's still with me, you know.

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It's still ingrained in me, that Welshness,

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and it's amazing to me that, you know, as I get older, I cross over into Wales and it's all there.

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I have but to hear a Welsh choir and I'm in floods of tears!

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Unless I'm trying to join in as well, make a bit of noise!

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Listen, let's do it! What's a good key, E flat is good?

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NATIONAL ANTHEM IS PLAYED ON PIANO

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# Gwlad, gwlad

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# Pleidiol wyf i'm gwlad

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# Tra mor yn fur

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# I'r bur hoff bau

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# O bydded i'r hen iaith barhau. #

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ROLF LAUGHS

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Oh, gosh, isn't that gorgeous!

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Just magic feeling.

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I'll be in tears again!

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LAUGHTER

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'I suppose with my family history, I was always destined to become an artist.

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'My grandfather was quite a character in Merthyr

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'and I've decided to reveal a little family secret,

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'because he was involved in a local Victorian scandal!'

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This is my grandfather's old home.

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He built up a very successful business in Merthyr, and he and his wife bought this old house.

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I intend to head straight upstairs where there's some interesting Harris history.

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The previous owner of this house did wood panelling all over this attic area,

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but he had the sense to leave that piece of bare wall

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where George Harris, my grandfather, had done all these lovely pencil drawings of Rosetta, my grandmother.

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She was just a maid at the time.

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She looked after the children, this was their playroom,

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but George and Rosetta fell in love, and they ran away together,

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leaving George's first wife.

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You can imagine the scandal that would have rocked Victorian Merthyr at the time.

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My grandfather and Rosetta left Merthyr in 1895

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to set up home in Cardiff, away from prying eyes.

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They went on to have nine children, and eventually married when George's first wife died.

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It was actually my dad, though, that finally persuaded his own father

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that the Harris family future lay in Australia.

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It's there that my dad and his brother Carl enlisted in the Aussie army

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and were soon fighting in the World War I trenches.

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A family portrait from that time is on show here at Cyfarthfa Castle.

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It's one my grandfather painted of Rosetta in 1918.

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This is a very emotional painting and focuses on one of the saddest stories in my family history...

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..the death of my Uncle Carl in World War I, 12 years before I was born.

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And that was just painted...

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..just after they had the news of Carl's death, their second son's death in the war,

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in the last couple of weeks of that war.

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You can see her eyes are wet with tears about to be shed.

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It's funny, isn't it, that years later I had a huge hit with Two Little Boys

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about potentially two brothers going to fight in the war,

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and my auntie once said to me,

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"I can't listen to that, I have to switch it off if it comes on the radio," and I was quite offended.

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"Why?" I said.

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She said, "Well, it just reminds me of your dad and of Carl,

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"and I can't listen to it. It just brings back those awful memories of hearing about his death."

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And that had never occurred to me until that point.

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It's amazing, isn't it?

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When you get to the bit,

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# Did you think I would leave you dying

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# When there's room on my horse for two

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# Climb up here, Joe We'll soon be flying

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# I can go just as fast with two

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# Did you say, Joe I'm all a tremble

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# Perhaps it's the battle's noise

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# But I think it's that I remember

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# When we were two little boys. #

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My visit to Cyfarthfa has really helped me.

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Like Shani, my granddad was seen as a bit avant-garde at the time.

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He wasn't afraid to try out new things, and I think that's something

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I've got to come to grips with if my self-portrait is to do Shani any justice.

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'As I head across the border back home, I feel invigorated by,

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'and I must say more than a little proud of, my Welsh clan's history.

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'I've enjoyed discovering more about my grandfather, and it really is a lot to take in.

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'I'm almost ready to do my painting in Shani's style.

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'All I have to do is remember the advice she gave me about how to do it.'

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So how would you suggest I go about it?

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Well, you've got to have a little hand mirror.

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I have a little hand mirror and I would look at myself in parts, you know.

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It's not like I'm looking. I never look at myself like in a mirror.

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Take your glasses off a minute.

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And there we go. You see, you could do all the nice big hairy eyebrows there.

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The eyes are quite important in my paintings.

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You've got lovely colours and things that you can emphasise,

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the relationship between that eye, for example, and the nose,

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and under here, and the nostrils and then the lips,

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and then you just build up from that.

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What I do is I don't just use the palette knife, I use the brush,

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so that the paint also is significant as well as the marks,

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but you can if... Now, you're going to have to loosen up.

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You're not going to be able to go into this business looking like a photograph,

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and so you just think of yourself as a landscape.

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-OK.

-And you break it down into parts with a close mirror.

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I will try, and you'll be the first to know!

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'I would never have thought of it that way -

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'painting the face as if it were a landscape!

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'Shani's words had been so helpful, and obvious when you see her large-scale pieces.

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'I now need to do the best I can and hope it comes close to these fantastic paintings.

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'So, the plan is, take on a smaller canvas and just concentrate on painting my face.'

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I'm back in my own studio now.

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I'm all set up to try and tackle a portrait in the style of Shani Rhys James,

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and she said "get your glasses off, cos we want to see right in there".

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I've got a little hand mirror, check the looking at myself the way she does, OK.

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Very red there.

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That's very red out there.

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Watching her doing all her bits and pieces,

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it was really fascinating.

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There is probably a method in how I do it, but I don't know how I do it.

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The eyes are going to go here,

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and the other one there, like that.

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I sort of maybe stop at the eyes sometimes, there's a way.

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I mean, why I have my eyes looking out at me is to focus my attention,

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the relationship I have with the painting.

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-Do you use colour an awful lot?

-I use a palette knife, brushes, rags, push it around.

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I need to get that line of light on the nose perfectly.

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This is really difficult to tackle because mainly I've never done anything this way before.

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Hmm. Oh, well!

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I'm getting a likeness to myself there.

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That's better already.

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Hey, that's good. For such a long time I didn't do any painting.

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Now it's so lovely to get back into it and feel the joy of doing some painting again.

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Oh, it looks roughly like me,

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after a very rough night!

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I'd better sign it.

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Maybe I should leave it for a couple of days to dry and then come back and do a bit more.

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Don't feel you're in control. Let it start speaking to you so that you lose control of it,

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so that you are not in control, that you're allowing yourself to get out of your comfort zone.

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I think what I've got to do is take off this whole left side.

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There's about one out of ten I like of mine.

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Um-huh.

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That's better already.

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It's really a shock when you try and do something

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like somebody else does it, and they've been doing it for years and years and years and years.

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You try it for the first time and it doesn't work, it's such a shock.

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I think I'll go back to what she does so well.

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I think I'll...

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I'll use a palette knife down that side.

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Now, wish me luck with these bits.

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I'm going to do a big background bit here.

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I'm happier with that.

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We're all a product of our upbringing, aren't we, whether it's Australian or whether it's Welsh,

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and this is just me. Who am I?

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I'm Rolf Harris.

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