'Motherhood’ - an exhibition timed to coincide with Mother's Day - was rare in providing a vehicle for a group of portrait artists to give our take on a single theme. It was also unique in marrying together words and picture as we decided - both in the exhibition and in the accompanying catalogue - to describe what was it was like to portray someone intimately known to us. And this use of words and pictures has become our trademark. This year’s exhibition ‘Portrayed! 25 years of inspiring women’ has been on tour since the Spring and is currently on show for clients of KPMG in their impressive Canada Square, London HQ. It contains 16 portraits of the founders and chairs of the International Women's Forum UK, an organisation of eminent female leaders, and commemorates its first quarter century. The catalogue, available online via self-publishing site Blurb [see link below], provides insights into the craft of painting the portraits of strangers. We learn of the way sitters and artists were paired, appropriately enough though the drawing of lots, and how one pair formed an instant connection via their Cornish origins. We discover the nervous anticipation prior to each first encounter, the unexpected welcomes – from a messy oil painter’s terror at being shown into her sitter’s immaculate Regent’s Park apartment to an artist’s surprise at being greeted with,“would you like coffee or shall we go straight to gin?” And we learn of the art of collaboration: what a shared trip to a gallery can reveal, or a limited number of sittings can fail to, what hairdressers and portrait artists have in common, how an item of clothing can capture the essence of a sitter and of portraying a sitter who doesn’t care about her own physiognomy. Two artists write of the challenge of portraying subjects posthumously and how a recording of one subject’s Desert Island Discs helped summon her up. Another speaks of painting her sitter in the fugitive light of an east-west apartment. But art comes to life thro’ a 3-way collaboration... now it's your turn, the viewer, to judge the results! Grit, approachability, teamwork - what leadership qualities do you see? http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/6201183-portrayed Follow our blog: https://thelotsroadgroup.wordpress.com/ Or on FB/Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/thelotsroadgroup @lotsroadgroup Stella Tooth www.stellatooth.co.uk