Cornish-based painter Ken Symonds (1927-2010) embarked on a series of portraits to document his fellow local painters in the early 1980s.
The Artist Portrait Series comprised 40 large pastels executed during 1984, using a combination of artist sittings and photography. Each work showed the sitter surrounded by the tools of their trade and works in progress and took about a week to complete. They were exhibited towards the end of 1984 at the Art Centre Trust in Truro and at the Penwith Galleries in St Ives.