Bonhams: An Exhibition of Works by Dexter Brown
Dexter Brown is the world’s foremost painter of motor sports. He explains to Matthew Wilcox what drives him – and how a charity exhibition to be held at Bonhams has kept him on track.
… It was in this spirit that he launched himself in a new direction in 1978, when he found himself captivated by the energy of performers such as Toyah Willcox, Debbie Harry and Suzi Quatro at the fabled Electric Ballroom in Camden. As Willcox reminisced in a recent interview, “He used to come to the live shows and paint, he’d be on the side of the stage and quickly sketching away in pastels. The drawings were astonishing. The energy that comes out of his work…”
The collaboration proved so fruitful that Willcox asked Brown to design her album covers and even her stage costume for her tour in the winter of 1981. A subsequent exhibition of Brown’s pop portraits made an impression on the executives of London’s Capital Radio, who owned the Duke of York theatre. For five years he was the artist-in-residence at the theatre, sitting in on plays and in dressing rooms, and given the task of portraying actors such as Al Pacino, Glenda Jackson and Billy Connolly.
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