About this piece.

Alan and I share a passion for music. I would look forward to our portrait-painting sessions for the music discussions we would have, and the Mozart, Handel or Purcell that he or I would choose to listen to, in the background. My special favourite was Handel’s “Solomon”.

I recall telling Alan that each time I listened to a recording of this, I would be drawn back to my days in Bombay, when I had just moved back after studies in the UK, and this in turn would lead me to reminisce about days gone by, living in the two different cities, and how I – we both – ended up in Brussels.

I genuinely love to listen to Alan talk – whether it’s about a book that he’s been reading, a new philosophical writer that he has recently encountered or a place that he has recently returned from. His insights into particular details can be unique. Our “dialogue” would often be me listening intently to one of Alan’s latest discoveries, and then my own questions and comments about these, while he painted.

I’m actually rather thrilled about the portrait that Alan has painted of me, including the path taken up to the end result. I would look forward to our sessions, which normally took place on a late afternoon on a Sunday, with the sun often still shining, and then with the twilight the bright lamp behind Alan being switched on, and him plying me first with tea and then with red wine, while I just relaxed and chattered away (Alan sometimes commented I was rather too relaxed – he needed me to sit very still and I would – without realizing it – be shifting and turning in my seat, making it difficult for him sometimes to continue with the angles he preferred me to remain in).

I will be taking the portrait, once the exhibit and project is over, to my family in Bombay. Alan has painted a gorgeous portrait of my sister Simonil from a photograph. She passed away in 2003 and my mother especially was wondering how we might have a painting made of her. Whoever sees it comments how much of a likeness it is, and how exquisitely it has been painted. My portrait will hang near hers. I can’t think of a better place for it.

Reshad Forbes

Portfolio / Dialogues / Reshad Forbes