Tuesday 16 September 2014

Every portrait tells a story


Every portrait tells a story
Margaret Green, watercolour, 60 x 40cm.

This season appears to be one of portrait commissions. It’s a real privilege to be entrusted with the image - in effect the life story of my subjects. Painted in Amsterdam, this recent portrait shows a visionary musician, gazing into the distance. In her mind’s eye she sees Kecskemét (Hungary), where she had just completed her MA at the Kodály Pedagogical Institute. I like that fond gaze, reflecting yet ambitious.

We can see that she has the maturity of one who has wrestled with life for quite a few years, but the portrait also depicts a great newly discovered joy in her musical life. She already played the piano, French Horn, and sang. And now she believes fervently in the Kodály-inspired approach to music education and hopes to inject new life into efforts to spread his philosophy in England. This portrait is an ode to the sensitivity, strength and aspirations of this woman, surrounded by music.
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Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher, a friend and colleague of the composer Béla Bartók. In the nineteen-thirties he embarked on a long-term project to reform music teaching in Hungary's lower and middle schools. His work resulted in the publication of several highly influential books on a child-developmental approach to the experience of music, that gradually spread internationally. The full story can easily be found on internet.



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