The series of drawings sourced from small-scale photographic portraits of then-contemporary footballers as found within the pages of a copy of the 1970-71 edition of ‘Charles Buchan’s Soccer Gift Book’ continues. The direct visual reference, acting as intermediary between the original image & the subsequent drawing, is an enlarged photocopy, somewhat degraded in image quality that, in tandem with a drawing process that relies as much on the erasure of marks made, leaving traces, as the accumulation of such in the resolution of tonal balance, informs the familiar bleached & ‘scoured surface’ aesthetic of the drawing.
Another influencing factor to be taken into account is the historical fact of the original photograph having been taken in the bright sunlight of a summer, pre-season day (when the greater number of such portraits would, traditionally, have been captured & that somehow adds to the pervading sense of nostalgia, at least as intended to be communicated), resulting in an image characterised by high contrast between dark & light, with a consequent certain loss in the range of tonal subtlety & also of detail – notably the eyes - to deep shadow as the subject squints into the face of the sunlight: by degrees, the photocopy & then the drawing from continue this process of loss, of distance from the original (itself a reproduction, as printed in the book), an analogue to, perhaps, the temporal distance since the moment the photograph was taken.
The portrait subject of the original image & thus the drawing is, of course, as it says on the drawing if not necessarily the tin, Hugh Fisher, then in the midst of an 11-year stay at Southampton (either side of stints at Blackpool & Southport, the native Glaswegian Hugh thus apparently being a chap who enjoyed life beside the English sea) which encompassed over 350 appearances but alas not one in the unexpected 1976 FA Cup Final victory (where he sat on the bench as an unused substitute) that probably constitutes the most glorious moment in the club’s history, their just-earned promotion back to the so-called ‘promised land’ of the over-hyped & over-exposed Premiership notwithstanding: Hugh Fisher’s particular claim to fame during that cup run of Southampton’s proved to be the last-minute equaliser he scored in the Third Round tie against Aston Villa that kept his team in the competition.
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