Amongst my favourite artist is a lady called Margaret Keane, who rose to fame when her ex husband Walter Keane took plagiarism to the maximum by taking credit for Margaret’s portraits of waif like children with distinctive and recognisable ‘big eyes’. After 10 years of an unhappy and dominating marriage, Margaret filed for divorce in 1965, and when remarried to a trustworthy and supportive husband in Daniel McGuire, Maragaret spoke on a radio broadcast in 1970 that she was the real creator of the ‘big eyes’. Before the trial, a paint out had been staged but Walter did not turn up, and so during the trial, the judge decided the only way to determine the true artist was to give both involved the same art supplies and time to create a new portrait of a child. Margaret finished her portrait in a total of 53 minutes and Walter never completed his portrait due to a sore shoulder complaint. Margaret was awarded 4 million pounds in damages, but never wanted the money, just her work and credit. In 2014, Tim Burton created the film ‘Big Eyes’ starring Amy Adams and Christopher Waltz and at the very end of the film stated that even now at the age of 90, Margaret Keane still paints every day.
The images shown above are some of my favourite pieces of her collection, even though none of them are the waif children. These portraits of women represent a style that I am very drawn to, taking someone and recreating them how one paints and one expresses their style. In particular the piece ‘Escape’ depicts a woman in a murky, atmospheric townscape, with a colour palette similar to my taste, by introducing bruised and deep tones of autumnal shades in the background, and muted pastel colours depicting the figures’ clothing
SOPHIE FAWCETT'S OCA LEARNING LOG 