Eight years after first being painted, Ollie appeared again as my entry into the BP Portrait Award, this time in 2012.
Nathalie's portrait for 2012, “Bruised”, was of her teenage son, Olivier who, during 2011, was involved in a serious car accident in France and was then the victim of a violent attack on the Greek island of Zante. Nathalie nearly lost him twice, and this painting expresses some of her trauma.
His trauma can be seen in his injuries and in his eyes. All the items on the pinboard in the background are connected to these events, apart from a tiny version of the portrait Nathalie painted of him as a child (exhibited in the BP Award 2004) symbolising the feeling, so familiar to mothers, that her injured son —now a young man — is also still, in part, her baby.
There's an image of the car involved, while the clock records the time of the crash. Other items are a hospital bill and Olivier's wristband for that year's Guilfest. At the bottom of the pinboard is a postcard he sent home from Zante.