An hour-long conversation with the late Michael Marra has been translated by an award-winning Scottish contemporary artist into a spectacular collage painting.
Now based in the Mearns with a studio in Stonehaven, Colin Brown was also born in Dundee. And it was while he was a student at the city’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art that he got to know Michael through a mutual friend.
Though life drew them apart, with Colin spending periods of time living and working in Europe, their friendship never waned.
When Michael Marra played at the Stonehaven folk festival six years ago, he took the opportunity of visiting Colin’s studio and that was when talk about a collaborative painting first began.
“The years passed and nothing happened,” said Colin. “Then out of the blue last August, he called to say he was coming to see me.
“I could tell he was gravely ill but we had an amazing conversation covering a host of different subjects and how the painting could work.
“He was quite clear he did not want to feature in the painting himself, so what I have tried to do is capture the spirit of the man through the personalities and subjects he discussed as inspiration for his own life and work.”
One of the prime subjects is Gustavo Dudamel, a violinist and youth orchestra conductor from Venezuela, where the Sistema movement aimed at transforming the lives of children through music and for which Michael Marra became a passionate advocate was born.
There are also characters as diverse as former Dundee United goalkeeper Hamish McAlpine, tennis great Martina Navratilova, the American physicist Hugh Everett, celebrated for his theory of multiple universes, American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer and famed Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.
There is also the Australian bowerbird, famed for amazing creativity in nest building and which Michael considered one of nature’s finest artists.
“Michael was delighted with the concept and he sent me a disc of his music performed by various artists to help set the mood when I started work,” said Colin.
Sadly Marra never got to see the painting as by a strange twist of fate, the day Colin was adding the finishing touches was the day last October when Michael died.
Now the painting, entitled A Conversation with Michael Marra, has been framed and in consultation with Michael’s family, Colin is looking for somewhere appropriate in Dundee where it can hang.
He said, “This painting is my tribute to a great Dundee man. I would like it to hang in a public place, where people can spend time looking at it and working out what it means.”