Podcast series | The Making of a Portrait

The Making of a Portrait is a podcast series from the National Galleries of Scotland, exploring an extraordinary creative exchange between artists Audrey Grant and Norman McBeath.

Presented by Deputy Director and Chief Curator of Portraiture at the Galleries Imogen Gibbon, the series was produced to coincide with The Long Look, an exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2019 which explored the collaboration between Audrey and Norman, and the writer Val McDermid.

Episode one - What inspired The Long Look?

In this episode, we meet the artists and learn more about what inspired this unique collaboration. Where was the idea born, how well did the artists know each other, and did they expect the project to evolve in the way it did?

Episode two - A collaboration in creativity

Find out more about the artists’ friendship and how their views on portraiture evolved during the collaboration.

Episode three - The art of being a sitter

We explore the long durational nature of the project, and discover how each of the sitters, Norman, Val and Audrey herself, approached the role of sitter in a different way.

Episode four - Charcoal and photography

The artists explain the role that charcoal and photography played in the story of The Long Look. They describe their response to the use of the two mediums and explain what they learned about each other’s processes during the project.

Episode five - When is a portrait finished?

In this episode, the artists’ explain how they knew the project was coming to an end and discuss whether a portrait can ever truly be described as ‘finished’.

You can listen to each of the five episodes on this page, or through our Soundcloud playlist for this podcast (external website).

25 June 2019