Onion Skinning - Matt Okine
Melissa Ritchie
- Sitter: Matt Okine
- Medium: Oil on Linen
- Dimensions: 122 x 92 cm
- Representation: The artist represents themselves
About the artist
Melissa Ritchie is a portrait artist who most recently has established herself as a painter of comedians, having painted Rhys Nicholson, Nazeem Hussain, Luke McGregor, Fiona O’Loughlan plus a number of other Australian comics. Melissa has been a finalist in many National Art Prizes including the Black Swan, Shirley Hannan, Kilgour, Portia Geach, Percival and the Archibald Prize. Ritchie has family in Brisbane, and has visited for holidays all her life. This portrait is called “Onion skinning”. Onion skinning is a term for a technique used in animation. Traditionally, animators drew individual frames on thin onion-skin paper, over a light source. The animators would put the previous and next drawings exactly beneath the working drawing, so that they could draw the ‘in between’ to give a smooth motion. Ritchie has painted transparent versions of Matt surrounding the solid, primary portrait, to showcase all the ‘in between’ paths he may turn to at any one moment in his diverse career.
About the sitter
Matt Okine is a Brisbane comedian, known mostly for his stand up, TV appearances and his four year stint as Triple J’s morning show radio presenter. He is also a screen writer and actor . His recently produced TV series on Stan called “The Other Guy”draws inspiration from Brisbane’s dating scene in the 2000s, particularly the various bars at the landmark Regatta and Normanby Hotels. He is also a rap musician, and a novelist and has just launched his new book “Being Black ‘n Chicken & Chips”. He regularly plays at the Brisbane Comedy Festival. Mat O’Kine now lives in Sydney, and this year had his first child.
