I’ve never been good with faces. I think I have slight face blindness. At a party, I can be introduced to the same person twice and be oblivious and often I need to recognize someone after many meet-ups, sometimes I can’t even recognize my friends if they change their hairstyle or pop out of nowhere unexpectedly. I’m sure there are many of you out there like me.

link takes you to Google Arts and Culture website
Prof Janice Tsui

During the pandemic lockdown, I followed the art series Portrait Artist of the Week on Sky TV. I decided to paint along with millions of other artists around the world as a sense of community was formed around the show. It led me to learn to see people properly. Maybe I never paid them enough attention. I’m not sure. For whatever reason, it’s been a great opportunity for my own technical growth to learn to capture the likeness and essence of someone and at the same time improve my face recognition skills. This has been a breakthrough journey to date, especially in 2020 when I decided to invest my time in painting portraits.

Around the same time, Artist Tom Croft whom I follow on Instagram started a movement offering free portraits to NHS workers as a way to honour their important work in the medical and healthcare field.

I offered this service to a friend of mine based in London and this led to a major exhibition. It is a huge honour that my Portrait of Professor Janice Tsui was selected to be in the Google Arts and Culture permanent exhibition titled “Healthcare Heroes”. This portrait can be seen as an AR version.