Artist paints portrait of NHS worker for TV show

A PORTRAIT artist from Watlington has spoken of his time on a television show celebrating the efforts of “extraordinary” NHS workers.

Mark Draisey, of Couching Street, was featured on the BBC’s Extraordinary Portraits, a show in which NHS workers are matched with artists to sit for a portrait, which is revealed to them at the end.

He was matched with Holly Crawshaw, an NHS porter from Torquay, who was inspired to join the NHS after it saved her daughter Renae’s life at the age of eight when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Mr Draisey was given a month to meet the pair, come up with an idea and then paint them before the painting was unveiled at the end to their delight.

It was part of the surprise that he had included Renae in the painting too.

At the reveal, Ms Crawshaw told the artist: “Mark, it’s incredible” while Renae teared up.

She added: “I’m really pleased that Renae’s in the portrait because it’s a journey we have been on together as mother and daughter, so this is forever.

“We’ve been through quite an emotional, connective moment in our lives, haven’t we? And look at her now: she’s a young woman but she’s still my baby. And that’s our connection. It’s just love.”

Mr Draisey, 61, worked as an illustrator for about 30 years before switching to portraiture in 2016.

He said: “I did a lot of work for Oxford University Press. Then because illustration is a dying art in this country, thanks to publishers forcing the prices down and taking away our copyright and everything, it was just a no go.

“I just wasn’t making any money and work was getting thinner on the ground, partly because I probably kicked up a fuss about the prices all the time.

“But tough, if they want me to do their work for them and make their book look attractive, they need to spend some money.

“I just decided to do what I should have done when I was at student level and go into portraiture.

“I’ve always had an interest in it and used to copy Old Masters so that’s how I learned. I am completely self-taught, just by copying them.” After struggling for work, he finally found success when exhibiting at the BP National Portrait Awards in 2020 with a portrait of Watlington teenager Kitty Tait, who co-founded the Orange Bakery with her father.

Mr Draisey said: “I think there were 2,000 entrants from 69 countries and only 42 paintings are selected, so that’s how tough it is.

“But it was 2020, so no one came. I don’t even know if it was ever hung on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery.”

People from Watlington are a recurrent theme in his work.

Mr Draisey said: “Most of them are quite fed up with me asking if I can paint them. You’d be surprised how many people say ‘No’.

“I think it has a lot to do with the fact that if you’re having a photo taken, you can still have a fair amount of input into that whereas if you have a portrait painted, that’s in the hands of the painter. It’s that slight lack of control over your image.

“I describe myself as a ‘warts and all painter’ so if someone is 65 years old and they’ve got wrinkles all over their face, yeah, I want to paint those. That’s them at that moment and that’s what’s interesting.

“I’ve done a lot of self-portraits and I’m cruellest to myself because people look at them and go: ‘You look about 90’. I just get carried away with all the wrinkles.”

Mr Draisey was approached by talent spotters for the TV show last year after exhibiting at a portraiture show in Brixton.

He said: “There was this long drawn out process with them interviewing us and narrowing it down to the final six artists. Luckily, I was chosen. I think it’s because I was wearing a cravat for the Zoom interview. One of the producers just kept commenting on it and I deliberately wore it on the first day of shooting just to keep him happy.”

The process began in December and filming started in February.

Mr Draisey said: “It was quite drawn out as you had the initial day’s filming in London where I got to meet my sitter for the first time.

“You are not given any information. You don’t know whether they’re male, female, what they do, how old they are, nothing, until that actual moment on camera where you’re put together, which is completely the opposite way to how I’d normally work.

“I was horrified when I saw her. The worst people to paint are young, beautiful women.

“She’s not particularly young because obviously she has got teenage children but she’s still a very attractive woman with long blonde hair. And the daughter, who at that point I didn’t know I was going to include, was similar. You want wrinkly old men — something you can get your teeth into.

“The next bit of filming was in Devon where Holly works. We did a day’s filming in the hospital and then a week or so later did shots on the beach and that was when I first had the chance to take photos of her to work from.

“In the programme, Holly says right from the outset, she doesn’t want to be painted in her uniform, just a black polo shirt and shorts.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to do that either and I’d already discarded any concept of having her pushing a trolley or a wheelchair. That would have been too corny.

“The first day I met her I was in a bit of a panic because I couldn’t think how I was going to approach this. It was only later that night thinking of her and her daughter that I suddenly thought, ‘I’ve got to include the daughter, she’s the whole reason behind this’.

“Then I thought, ‘I’ve really got about four weeks left to paint this and now I’ve put two faces in’. But it worked out well and I managed to get it done in time.

“Then there was another medical issue in Holly’s family, which meant that the filming of the grand unveiling was delayed by a month-and-a-half.

“I could have used that time painting but instead it gave the portrait plenty of time to dry and I managed to get it framed. I hate showing paintings if they’re not framed.”

Mr Draisey was struck by tragedy just days before the last day of filming when his Hungarian Vizsler Hugo passed away.

He said: “That hit me big. That’s the reason why on the programme, when they all start bursting into tears, I’m on the verge, not because of them or the paintings, but because my emotions are up here anyway.

“I still haven’t got over losing Hugo and that was back in March.”

Mr Draisey was happy with his portrait given the amount of time he was allocated.

He said: “I think I did as much as I was able to. I would have loved to have done a much more detailed background but all I did was bands of colour.

“You’ve got a very light pale blue behind the heads. Then there’s a sort of ochre, reddish-brown stripe, a greenish stripe and a sandy stripe which are all the colours from the beach. It’s the sky, the cliffs, the sea and the sand.

“Holly recognised that straight away and, given more time, I might have been tempted to actually paint the landscape.”

Mr Draisey found the experience of being filmed made him nervous, even though he had appeared on camera before when he was working on Spitting Image in the Eighties and there was some behind-the-scenes filming.

He said: “The speech side of things was hard, particularly the first day with the presenter Bill Bailey. I just got so tongue tied.

“I can’t remember the actual question he asked me but I was trying to use the Oscar Wilde quote, ‘There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about’.

“I tried it three times and just could not get it out. In the end, I just said: ‘Scrap that question. We’ll move on.’ You know it’s going to be edited anyway.

“Holly was incredibly nervous at first but as the filming process progressed, you could see her getting more relaxed and used to the cameras, particularly when we were on the beach.”

Mr Draisey said Bailey was “lovely” to him.

“He’s exactly what you’d expect — no pretences,” he said. “He was so generous because when we were filming in Teignmouth, we were being stopped all the time by people and he gave them so much time and did loads of selfies so filming took ages.”

• Extraordinary Portraits is available on BBC iPlayer.