![]() It seemed if I were to have anyone as the main character of the show, it had to be her Props for the artist’s ‘figurative and mythic’ work © Lydia Goldblatt I think they really signify me,” Leahy says of the artworks, which remain her favourites. “I was in a big fur coat and my hair was really curly. Those first paintings, a series of three portraits captured over three days entitled She’s Called India, document the forging of their bond. So I let him paint me – and it turned into quite a cool friendship.” ![]() Coming out of a break-up I thought I’d try a new venture, meet a stranger. “I messaged Max as soon as that relationship broke up,” she says. At the time she was in a relationship, and refused as she felt it wouldn’t be appropriate. ![]() Denison-Pender had spotted Leahy at various parties and on social media when he asked if he could paint her. The two have not seen each other for some time as Leahy has been travelling, but they are instantly relaxed. Max Denison-Pender with India Leahy at his south London studio © Lydia Goldblatt She is unmistakable from the canvases that surround us: emerald eyes and alabaster skin under a mass of black curls. She kisses him on the cheek and perches on a stool. As he talks, his friend and muse, 25-year-old India Leahy arrives. He is hoping to paint panthers and meet tribes rarely seen by others, a typical blend of the figurative and mythic that has characterised his work. The painter is buzzing about a forthcoming trip to the Amazon in support of Funai, a Brazilian government organisation aiding indigenous people. It’s a sunlit summer morning in south London, and Max Denison-Pender is sitting in his terrace studio. As long as she has the time, I will paint. “It’s nice to document a body over a lifetime and I want to capture Laura at every stage of her life. Now the pair have reconnected, both are keen to continue their work. During that time you learn what makes people laugh, what makes them cry. “I just thought, ‘Wow, something beautiful is coming out of this.’” Hayes interjects: “I started painting her eight or nine years ago, and we’ve since done eight paintings. “Our relationship was just as important as the end result,” she says of their platonic connection. Searle now lives in Madrid working as a product marketing manager for a tech start-up as well as running her own fashion business consultancy. ![]() This trust has forged an unbreakable friendship. ![]() On the other side, a group of chairs around a fireplace offer a place to sit and reflect.Ī portrait of a woman in a wedding dress by Hayes, alongside a reproduction of an Alexander the Great bust by Leochares © Lydia Goldblatt His alchemist’s table sits to one side of his studio: tubes laid to waste on trays, jam jars filled with oils, and brushes cramped into pots. These obsessions fill his waking hours – if he is not working on a canvas, he is mixing his own paints and glues. As Laura will tell you, I have lots of obsessions,” he says. Hayes, 38, has been likened to a modern-day John Singer Sargent, and trained at the Charles H Cecil Studios in Florence. “I was told there were artists living in these houses, and was excited to be in an artistic environment, but hadn’t realised there was someone like James and his magnificent paintings here,” she recalls. Searle was studying at the London College of Fashion and working for Marques’Almeida when she moved next door to Hayes’s west London studio. It was quite an entrance,” says Laura Searle, a slender 33-year-old Spaniard with an elegant, almost feline poise. “The first time I met James, I crashed into a barbecue in the garden. ![]()
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