Drink Will Be the Death of Me
Trevor Makinson (1926–1992)
Worthing Museum and Art Gallery

Transcript

This painting is called Drink Will be the death of me, 1951 by Trevor Makinson, born, 1926 died, 1992 and the medium is oil on canvas. It’s a man, but I think he’s quite feminine. He strikes me as being an intellectual, quite clever, but he hasn’t found himself. I would say he’s fairly Arty, probably egocentric, but he’s, he feels he’s, he’s very good at things, but he hasn’t quite found what he wants. And I think when artists do that, he’s probably turned to drink because he cannot find what he wants. And the skeleton there showing that look, he’s going more towards that state. He looks it looks fed up, doesn’t he? He’s sort of just, Oh, why do I bother? I think I see the funny side of all of this. I see the funny side of myself, actually, yeah, he’s laughing.

He’s having a laugh at himself as well. Still in the 50s, you were just, you had to be what you were told to be, not what you want it to be. Men were men. Women were women. We do this. We do that. You have to do this. You have to do that. You had to be what people wanted you to be, and you had to do what, yeah, but now you can be what you want to be. But he wasn’t going to follow that conventional. He said, Oh, what a load of conventional nonsense. I’m not going to be what people tell me to be. I’m going to be what I want to be. That’s what he’s saying. Yeah.