Impress Yourself - with Mary Jane Ansell

This week we meet celebrated portrait artist Mary Jane Ansell whose incredible life-like paintings are in the National Portrait Gallery (newly revamped and well worth a visit if you haven't been). She also exhibits in New York and LA, taking commissions from some of the world’s richest art collectors. She’s a very old friend of Alice’s from the earliest days of Posh Totty Designs when Alice was exhibiting in the Open Houses here in Brighton. Talking to us from her farm house in Wales, Mary Jane describes how she persevered with her passion for portraiture at college in an era when it was very out of fashion. She describes the process of how her portraits develop, from choosing her models, to the first sitting, how she discovers the background story of each of her subjects, to the big reveal. Fascinating and wise, Mary Jane says that if she were to sit for her own portrait, she’d wear her Abby Mosseri tourmaline ring and necklace that she bought for herself when she became successful. Please do check out her work on @maryjaneansell or www.maryjaneansell.com To view our guests' special bits, please follow us on Instagram @showusyourbitspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.