Fully Completely (Gord Downie) - acrylic on canvas - 10” x 8”
Why did I spend so long on this portrait of The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie? A few reasons.
Gord was such a captivating performer. Few frontmen really feel the music like he did. He was a dancer at heart and had this… aura.
I also listen to live Hip tracks more than the studio versions. (Seriously, thank you to the fans that made so much live audio available lol). The music perked me up while I was going through some really hard mental and life challenges.
I needed to paint something challenging that I also enjoyed to get my confidence back as a painter. What could have been harder than trying to capture the essence of Gord?
The source photo for this painting, by Gie Knaeps, is my favorite of him. I’ve seen a lot of fan art of Gord from the later years of his life. While I enjoy all the Hip eras, when I think of Gord being “possessed by the music,” I always come back to this.
It was hard to know when to call this painting done 😅 It’s a very hard angle, hard lighting, and I went so small with my canvas size. I hope I pulled it off as well as I could and did Gord justice. He made such an impact on Canadian music.
This was a personal project, just for fun. The image was selected via internet search to practice portraiture with something I like. It's not-for-profit and has no commercial purpose.
Should this image unintentionally happen to infringe copyrights, please let me know and it will be immediately removed.
Why did I spend so long on this portrait of The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie? A few reasons.
Gord was such a captivating performer. Few frontmen really feel the music like he did. He was a dancer at heart and had this… aura.
I also listen to live Hip tracks more than the studio versions. (Seriously, thank you to the fans that made so much live audio available lol). The music perked me up while I was going through some really hard mental and life challenges.
I needed to paint something challenging that I also enjoyed to get my confidence back as a painter. What could have been harder than trying to capture the essence of Gord?
The source photo for this painting, by Gie Knaeps, is my favorite of him. I’ve seen a lot of fan art of Gord from the later years of his life. While I enjoy all the Hip eras, when I think of Gord being “possessed by the music,” I always come back to this.
It was hard to know when to call this painting done 😅 It’s a very hard angle, hard lighting, and I went so small with my canvas size. I hope I pulled it off as well as I could and did Gord justice. He made such an impact on Canadian music.
This was a personal project, just for fun. The image was selected via internet search to practice portraiture with something I like. It's not-for-profit and has no commercial purpose.
Should this image unintentionally happen to infringe copyrights, please let me know and it will be immediately removed.