It’s entirely apposite, then, for Fletcher to have created portraits of the duo that, side by side, form a modern-day altarpiece, a pair of works which seem to radiate a mystic presence while joyfully documenting the powerful terrestrial sources of their subjects’ inspiration. Reflecting the delicacy, texture, tactility and craftsmanship that distinguishes Jackson’s and Kee’s creations, Fletcher utilised collage to form the sitters’ figures, dress and accessories, layering pieces of archival, glossy and self-adhesive papers to clothe them in the glowing colours, patterns and shapes of their own works. The technique, in fact, mirrors the designers’ own creative methods: their intuitive, reflective sketching; the process of assemblage and layering of fabrics and imagery intrinsic to the tailoring of individual pieces. Or, as Kee has explained of her Black opal and White opal fabrics – chosen by Karl Lagerfeld for a collection he created for Chanel in 1983: ‘Karl was entranced by the way I collaged my clothes with patterns and prints’.
Jackson, who has described her first visit to the opal-mining towns of Lightning Ridge and Yowah as one of the turning points in her career, is depicted wearing an opal neckpiece she designed in collaboration with Adrian Lewis Jewellery and Berta Opals. Her sleeves and headscarf are fashioned from a fabric in molten pink, orange and purple tones; and her shimmering, doublet-like garment is overlaid with a delicate shawl formed from multiple Sturt’s Desert Pea shapes. Kee is cloaked predominantly in a vibrant red – the colour of her beloved waratah – punctuated throughout with contrasts, including patches of charcoal black and shoots of green to suggest both the bushfires which have imperilled Kee’s Upper Blue Mountains home and the regeneration that has followed them. Fletcher travelled there for a weekend sitting, joining Kee on the precipitous descent into the Grose Valley at Blackheath and collecting ochre she later ground down and incorporated into the background of the portrait. ‘She asked me what version of her I wanted’, Fletcher remembers, ‘and when I thought about what I wanted from the work ... I wanted to get the highest frequency possible for her energy, and I think that involved the colour, and she just got it.’ Indeed, Kee has described the waratah as her totem, ‘the brazen red goddess of the bush’. ‘I am always astonished that such beauty can spring from such devastation. I see waratahs as the essence of fire – from the destruction comes rebirth. From personal tragedy, I have been reborn through representing the waratah in my art.’
By invoking the transformation and transcendence inherent in collage, Fletcher has created portraits in which the key elements – sitters, artist, story and medium – are perfectly integrated; and which, in their colour and iconography, synthesise an iconic and enduring friendship with the spirituality, joy and prescient environmental sensibilities which are at the core of the duo’s creative work. Though made for the Archibald Prize, these are vastly more than just ‘portraits painted from life, with the subject known to the artist’ – as blandly stipulated in the Prize’s terms and conditions. In complete contrast, they are examples of portraits in which the sense of connection between artist and subject is palpable, and which give credit to the notion that portraits can somehow capture the presence, individuality and essence of those we love and connect to most.