Gigi Ettedgui Painter

At 27, after watching Kenneth Clark's Civilisation in Covid lockdown and remembering an art trip there as a teenager, I decided to change my life and move to Florence. I was accepted by the Charles Cecil Studio and spent three years learning about classical oil painting techniques and painting from life and sight size. I return as often as I can to a city I think of as my spiritual home …I feel very lucky to have been taught by Charles and the other brilliant painters in such a beautiful tradition that traces its roots back to Titian and Velasquez. Painting from life to the scale of life under natural light, the canvas is placed alongside the sitter with the painter standing at a distance. It's about knowing where to stand and how to see. And contrary to what many think, incredibly liberating. I moved back to London in September 2024 when I was offered a space in the St Paul’s studios in Talgarth Road, surrounded by a wonderful community of artists and friends (and a studio cat.) I paint portraits, still lives and works from imagination. I do accept commissions of both portraits and still lives. For portrait commissions, prices start from £3000.

To commission a portrait or a still life painting (prices vary) please email gigiettedgui@mac.com.

I paint from life under natural light, so this means multiple sittings at my studio on the Talgarth Road.

At 27, after watching Kenneth Clark's Civilisation in Covid lockdown and remembering an art trip there as a teenager, I decided to change my life and move to Florence. I was accepted by the Charles Cecil Studio and spent three years learning about classical oil painting techniques and painting from life and sight size. I return as often as I can to a city I think of as my spiritual home …I feel very lucky to have been taught by Charles and the other brilliant painters in such a beautiful tradition that traces its roots back to Titian and Velasquez. Painting from life to the scale of life under natural light, the canvas is placed alongside the sitter with the painter standing at a distance. It's about knowing where to stand and how to see. And contrary to what many think, incredibly liberating. I moved back to London in September 2024 when I was offered a space in the St Paul’s studios in Talgarth Road, surrounded by a wonderful community of artists and friends (and a studio cat.) I paint portraits, still lives and works from imagination. I do accept commissions of both portraits and still lives. For portrait commissions, prices start from £3000.

To commission a portrait or a still life painting (prices vary) please email gigiettedgui@mac.com.

I paint from life under natural light, so this means multiple sittings at my studio on the Talgarth Road.

I treat the flowers I paint like the models I paint. I place the flower alongside the canvas, more like portrait sitting than a still life. There is a greater sense of urgency and intensity when I paint a flower as there is no need to stop for a tea break or converse. And because I have only a very small window of time before the flower dies, these works have to be painted intensely and vigorously. I find the flowers at their most beautiful the moment before they die …when it's fully blown. It is the same time pressure when I paint a blossom or a bud. I only paint from life and with natural light.

An abstract figurative cycle of black paintings. Painted with only ivory black, these paintings are actually all about light. Each is inspired by the myth of Venus, set in a wild seascape.There is a Venus figure inspired by Titian, Velasquez, and Ingres. Depending on where you stand and how the light hits the brushstrokes, your eye finds her.

In terms of literary inspiration, the entire abstract Venus cycle of black paintings is inspired by the wilder shores of love, and particularly from Catullus’ poem 64, where his deeply powerful evocation of Ariadne waking up on the shore realising Theseus has left her… devastating but there is hope as she is on the shore of true love with the arrival of Bacchus

An abstract figurative cycle of black paintings. Painted with only ivory black, these paintings are actually all about light. Each is inspired by the myth of Venus, set in a wild seascape.There is a Venus figure inspired by Titian, Velasquez, and Ingres. Depending on where you stand and how the light hits the brushstrokes, your eye finds her.

In terms of literary inspiration, the entire abstract Venus cycle of black paintings is inspired by the wilder shores of love, and particularly from Catullus’ poem 64, where his deeply powerful evocation of Ariadne waking up on the shore realising Theseus has left her… devastating but there is hope as she is on the shore of true love with the arrival of Bacchus

ON PAINTING A PORTRAIT

“Can you turn your head slowly from side to side? … and back again….now STOP…Maybe a little tilt? A little less? Is that easy to hold? Now without moving your head can you move your eyes across the room…try looking down…now back up again, look off to the side, just over my shoulder, now can you try looking back to me, into my eyes…that’s it.”

I look into your eyes, your face turned, your right side in shadow. And so begins our pas-de-deux.

A portrait is really about movement. About movement and tension. So much for stillness… Don’t misunderstand me, I need you to sit still while I try to capture your likeness. But if I really want to paint you, the essence of you sitting in my chair, I need you to move, to speak, to think, to feel, to forget you are posing, to take you out of your everyday, to show me how you really are. The tilt, the turn, the way your hair falls and curls onto your temple, the traces of a smile, the lines of your frown, the light running across your iris into the white of your eye…Painting a portrait, it’s about capturing you, not just a likeness.

Painting you is about catching the way light flows across you, how your shadows fall. For this to work, I need northern-facing, high windows and black out blinds which I hoist like sails to control the light. I love painting you when the clouds come out. It’s what brings out the light against the dark, the glints of light across your face like quicksilver. Not by accident either, because in the vermilion we use for flesh, there is mercury.

I sulk when I have a sitting on a beautiful summer day. Not because I’d rather be on a walk, but the light blasts into the studio making your rakish complexion orange. The only time it’s really beautiful to paint in the summer is very early in the morning, in the gentle stillness before the sun properly comes up. When the light feels Titian’s.

What is your temperature? What is your brightness? What is your colour? And what are your brush strokes? Where are your edges? What is your vanishing point? What is your focus? Your depth? How can I dramatise you? What do you want me to see? What are you hiding behind? But more often than not, it’s what you don’t want me to see that makes a portrait interesting.

I choose you because you are a man and I find you beautiful. I rarely paint women. Is that because women are harder? Because I am a woman? Because I am attracted to men? Because men are easier to characterise, and women I tend to idealise … when I paint a man I feel I am making a painting, when I paint a women it feels like a portrait. This is all my own doing.

Where I am very shy with men in life, I am bold in paint. I follow your contours, cling onto your Roman nose, darken your shadows, chisel your jaw, light up your eyes, blur your mouth soft enough as if you are speaking …in fact you shouldn’t even really notice a mouth they are so hard to paint. I try to paint your mouth as I look into your eyes, as if we are about to kiss.

Your skin. Your flesh. I begin with brushes and end with fingers. I love painting with my finger tips, it feels like I am sculpting you in paint on the canvas.

Your Roman nose. Your nose is what anchors this pose and my painting. It’s my reference from which I judge all my proportions.

Your eyes. Looking down on me, you seem dignified, somewhat arrogant. But you aren’t like that. Looking down on you (although the angle is often more flattering), you seem vulnerable. I like painting looking into your eyes. Looking away or off the canvas can be incredibly powerful too. If I want to paint you elegant, louche, melancholic, I’ll often go for that. But for this portrait, I want to look you in the eye. To see my studio windows reflected in your irises.

I need that intensity to forget I am here.

So much of my time is spent beating myself up, deafened by self doubt. So now I like to listen to music when I paint. I realise it’s nice for you too, it engages you. It alters the mood of the painting. Some days I will only listen to nocturnes, others it’s Bryan Ferry and the Stones. It keeps me light, relaxed and makes me remember I actually enjoy painting. It’s what keeps me painting loosely.

The beginning is my favourite part, using my biggest brushes to distill you into broad, directional, thick strokes. It’s as exciting as the first five seconds of meeting someone with whom you could fall in love.

And for me to capture you, I am in perpetual movement. Like the ebb and flow of a tide. Over the next thirty or so hours, I will move back and forth across my studio. Music playing, moving so close to you I can see your freckles… then far away, touching the light on your shoulder. The intimacy and the distance, the sense of protective space around us…That's when it feels like I am dancing with you.

So why do I paint?

Why do I paint you?

Because painting a portrait of you is saying we were both here once, together. And that’s what is magical about painting from life. When you forget you are posing, and I forget I am painting, then the portrait really starts to come. Then I feel like I am flying. There are no more doubts, no more questions, no more thoughts, no hesitations, no more ego, I am just painting. I am just painting you as I see you in that moment.