Adam Birtwistle

Two paintings by Birtwistle have been purchased by the National Portrait Gallery in London: a portrait of his father, Sir Harrison, and one of Elvis Costello (Declan McManus). Other musicians, conductors and composers to feature in his paintings include the pianist Alfred Brendel, and the composers Hans Werner Henze and Sir Michael Tippett. In 1999, he was commissioned by Curtis Price to paint a portrait of his father for Dukes Hall at the Royal Academy of Music. The following year, 2000, he was asked to paint portraits of six composers, whose operas were to be featured during the 2001 Glyndebourne Festival: Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Janáček, Britten and again Adam’s father, Sir Harrison. He was subsequently commissioned by Glyndebourne to paint the film and stage director, Sir Peter Hall, the artist and stage designer, David Hockney, the opera singer Anja Silja, as well as Sir George Christie, the then chairman of the Glyndebourne Festival, and his wife, Lady Christie. Among others, Birtwistle has done portraits of the painters Craigie Aitchison and Peter Blake. Fascinated by ‘performers’ of all descriptions, his subjects vary from the astronomer, Sir Patrick Moore, and Winston Churchill, through to the actor Jeremy Irons and Dame Marjorie Scardino. In 2008 he was commissioned by the broadcaster Nick Ross to produce a series of ten paintings called "Black is White" to confront racial stereotypes. The exhibition was launched by Trevor Philips who chairs Britain's Commission for Equalities and Human Rights. The cycle includes a triptych of arguably the three most significant American black civil rights activists, Marcus Garvey, Dr Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, along with race reversal portraits of the iconic faces of Marilyn Monroe, Jessye Norman, Charles Dickens, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Abraham Lincoln and Birtwistle's second take on Sir Winston Churchill though this time painted as he would have looked with black skin pigmentation.