Succeeding famously

If securing high-profile subjects is a measure of an artist’s success, Ross Watson is doing very nicely indeed.

With Jake, Elton organised it, Watson says casually of one of his latest models.

Jake, of course, is Jake Shears, flamboyant front man of pop band Scissor Sisters. He modelled for the painter after a recommendation from long-time Watson fan Elton John.

Shears is only the latest in a roll call of stars to have appeared in the artist’s instantly recognisable contemporary realist work.

There’s swimmer Grant Hackett and former football star Ian Roberts, and buff AFL players Brodie Holland and Paul Licuria, all of whom took little convincing to pose.

With Ian Roberts, my art dealer at the time organised that, Watson says of his 1990s collaboration with the rugby league legend.

Ian had been in to see one of my Mardi Gras shows and liked my work and so my art dealer set up a dinner meeting for us and it all went from there.

I painted a whole series of Ian when he was still playing football. It wasn’t long after that that he came out.

Watson started working with AFL stars Brodie Holland and Paul Licuria after a curator friend met with [AFL heavyweight and television boss] Eddie McGuire.

As it turned out, my friend was having lunch with Eddie and [his wife] Carla McGuire the following day, and the rest is history.

He said, -˜Do you want Brodie Holland?’ and that’s how it started. And then Brodie brought Paul Licuria over to see my work, and they’ve both become really close mates.

Images of the two AFL pin-ups, Ian Roberts and Jake Shears will feature in Watson’s Overview exhibition in Waterloo from 27 February.

The Mardi Gras season show, billed as a mid-career retrospective, will include many of Watson’s most iconic works, including digital prints, a medium he has recently started exploring.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Watson has also released a limited edition Overview book. With a print run of just 75 and a $1,260 price tag, Overview impressed Shears when he modelled for Watson during the Scissor Sisters’ recent Australian tour.

Jake stood there going through my book and looked at me and said, Ross, these paintings are making me want to have sex right now,’ Watson says.

The effect is understandable. Over his 25-year career, Watson has made his name with erotically charged depictions of a host of male beauties.

I am drawn to painting who I find attractive [but] if you ask any artist, whether it’s Rubens or Hockney, they’ve only ever painted models that they’re attracted to, Watson says.

[But] in more recent years, feeling and emotion have been the important things.

You can see that in the paintings from the last years. In many of them, it’s about the emotional state of the model and the whole feel of the painting.

In recent works, Watson has blended reality and fantasy, contrasting contemporary models with classical figures by the likes of Caravaggio and Vermeer.

The classical reference might be one of Vermeer’s women reading a letter and [the viewer] thinking, -˜How is she feeling? What is the content of that letter? What has she just learnt?’

My contemporary model is often mirroring the apparent emotional state of the classical figure.

As Watson prepares for Overview, the latest in a number of Mardi Gras shows, what does he think explains his enduring success?

The paintings invite people to interpret or project their own thoughts onto them. They’re open, he says.

What pleases me with every exhibition is that everyone who comes in has a different interpretation of a painting.

Ross Watson’s Overview is on at Depot II Gallery, 2 Danks St, Waterloo, from 27 February to 10 March. The Overview book will be on sale at the exhibition. It is also available at www.rosswatson.com.