David Cobley

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, said: “This is an important new portrait of a very significant figure. I am delighted that David Cobley has created such a compelling portrait.”

The painter behind the portraits who is busy discovering himself. “I am reluctant to give you a list of all the artists represented because I want it to remain a mystery. It would be nice to publish a book about it.”

Local artist David Cobey can number
actors Daniel Radcliffe and Kate Winslet
among fans of his award-winning paintings.

“It is like me,” Dodd said. “It is a portrait
of a comedian in a vest who’s done the
performance and is slightly melancholic.
He’s debating which jokes got the laughs.”

Almost without thinking about it, I referred
to Cobley’s still-lifes as capturing the “soul”
of an object.

Like many renowned portraitists of past
and present (for example Sargent, Orpen,
John or Lavery and more recently Lucien Freud) Cobley paints with a deceptively easy virtuosity that transforms a straight portrait into a complex still life and interior composite.