One Day With Gigi Ettedgui

ONE DAY WITH | MASTERS & MUSES | WORLD OF CABANA 

Painter Gigi Ettedgui lives in London, but is never happier than when travelling. She sits down with Sophie Goodwin to discuss her all-consuming practice: why she typically paints men over women, the psychology of the sitting process and what she listens to whilst she works. Gigi is also developing her tiny house on the sea on the Greek island, Patmos, and has two exhibitions on the horizon.

INTERVIEW BY SOPHIE GOODWIN | MASTERS & MUSES | 4 JUNE

Self portrait, by Gigi Ettedgui

I'm an early bird, and always begin with a cup of tea in bed. I’ll either read, at the moment it’s John Berger, or, if I am up early enough, I'll squeeze in an ancient episode of Inspector Morse or Wycliffe with my Greek rescue dog Ajax and French bulldog Babette. Home is wherever you love and feel loved.

Breakfast is two boiled eggs and a huge pot of coffee. Followed by a cigarette, and then I leg it out of the house to my studio on the Talgarth Road. I know I am on holiday when I have the luxury of a four hour breakfast with friends dropping in and out.

I wear a work uniform of sorts. Because I am a messy artist, my wardrobe definitely divides into painting clothes and life clothes. When I am not in my apron, I live in clothes by Connolly, which has been part of our family since before I was born. My mother, Issy, and I work together with French designer Marc Audibet, our Scottish knitwear designer Lorraine Acornley, and Carolyn Parmar on the collections.

I sulk when I have a sitting on a beautiful summer day. Not because I’d rather be on a walk, but because the light blasts into the studio making complexions a rakish orange. The only time it’s really beautiful to paint in the summer is very early in the morning, in the gentle stillness before the sun properly comes up. When the light feels Titian.

Gigi Ettedgui by William Waterworth

Before training as an artist, I lived and worked in Paris for 8 years. I was assisting the creative director at Hermès. I had the privilege of working with very talented artists, designers and craftsmen and this shaped my eye and discipline.

I changed my life aged 27. After watching Kenneth Clark's Civilisation during lockdown, and remembering an art trip to Florence as a teenager, I decided to move there. I was accepted by the Charles Cecil Studio and spent three years learning about classical oil painting techniques and painting from life and sight size. I return as often as I can to a city I think of as my spiritual home. I moved back to London in September 2024 when I was offered a space in the St Paul’s studios in Talgarth Road, surrounded by a wonderful community of artists and friends (and a studio cat).

I feel very lucky to have been taught by Charles Cecil. And the other brilliant painters in such a beautiful tradition that traces its roots back to Titian and Velasquez. When painting from life to the scale of life, the canvas is placed alongside the sitter, under natural light, with the painter standing at a distance. It's about knowing where to stand and how to see. And contrary to what many think, incredibly liberating. 

The creative process is lengthy. But this is how it feels to paint a portrait: “Can you turn your head slowly from side to side? ...and back again....now STOP...Maybe a little tilt? A little less? Is that easy to hold? Now without moving your head can you move your eyes across the room...try looking down...now back up again, look off to the side, just over my shoulder, now can you try looking back to me, into my eyes...that’s it.” I look into your eyes, your face turned, your right side in shadow. And so begins our pas-de-deux.

Various works by Gigi Ettedgui

I don’t stop for lunch. Maybe a sneaky cappuccino and cigarette in the garden after I’ve set up and before I start painting. On the odd occasion I do break for lunch, it’s normally a communal lunch in someone’s studio or back garden. Dangerously, we have HG Walter and Neal’s Yard on our doorsteps [near the studio], perfect also for grabbing something to take to a dinner party straight from the studio.

Conversations with artists, curators and old friends help my work. It’s a joy to be on the Talgarth Road because I am surrounded by talented artists, friends, and old teachers of mine at Charles Cecil Studios. It’s conversations with these artists and artists in Florence, which I am lucky enough to return to each year for a few weeks back at the studio, which are so important. I don’t think your work can evolve without a community.

Painting is about catching the way light flows, how shadows fall. For this to work, I need northern-facing, high windows and black out blinds which I hoist like sails to control the light. I love painting when the clouds come out. It’s what brings out the light against the dark, the glints of light  like quicksilver. Not by accident either, because in the vermilion we use for flesh, there is mercury. I begin with brushes and end with fingers. I love painting with my finger tips, it feels like I am sculpting paint on the canvas.

A portrait is really about movement. About movement and tension. If I really want to paint you, the essence of you sitting in my chair, I need you to move, to speak, to think, to feel, to forget you are posing, to take you out of your everyday life, to show me how you really are. The turn, the way your hair falls and curls onto your temple, the traces of a smile, the lines of your frown, the light running across your iris into the white of your eye. Painting a portrait: it’s about capturing you, not just a likeness.

Study of roses by Gigi Ettedgui

I mostly choose beautiful men as subjects, and rarely paint women. Men are easier to characterise, and women I tend to idealise; when I paint a man I feel I am making a painting, when I paint a woman it feels like a portrait. This is all my own doing.

Where I am very shy with men in life, I am bold in paint. I follow contours, cling onto a Roman nose (this is what anchors pose and my painting: it’s my reference from which I judge all my proportions), dark shadows, chiselled jaws, light eyes, and blur a mouth soft enough as if speaking. In fact, you shouldn’t even really notice a mouth they are so hard to paint. I try to paint as if we are about to kiss.

I listen to music while I work; so much of my time is spent deafened by self doubt otherwise. Music engages sitters and alters the mood of the painting. Some days I will only listen to nocturnes, other days it’s Bryan Ferry. It keeps me relaxed, loose and makes me remember I actually enjoy painting. When I am painting a portrait, it almost takes on the guise of a therapy session where my sitter and I talk for hours while we work together, offset with Max Richter, Chopin, or the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street.

I am in perpetual movement. Like the ebb and flow of a tide. Over the next thirty or so hours, I will move back and forth across my studio, music playing, moving so close I can see freckles, then far away. The intimacy and the distance, the sense of protective space. That's when it feels like I am dancing with my sitter. There are no more doubts, no more questions, no more thoughts, no hesitations, no more ego, I am just painting.

The hint of a smile, Andrea, by Gigi Ettedgui

I love to paint flowers too. They are also portraits to me. I treat the flowers like the models I paint. I place the flower alongside the canvas, more like a portrait sitting than a still life. There is a greater sense of urgency and intensity when I paint a flower as there is no need to stop for a tea break or converse. And because I have only a very small window of time before the flower dies, these works have to be painted intensely and vigorously. I find the flowers at their most beautiful the moment before they die.

I am currently painting an abstract figurative cycle of black paintings. Painted with only ivory black, these paintings are actually all about light. Each is inspired by the myth of Venus, and amidst the waves of black is a Venus figure inspired by Titian, Velasquez, Ingres and Botticelli. Depending on where you stand and how the light hits the brushstrokes, the eye finds her.

If I’ve been painting, I tend to go straight out from the studio. I’ll change out of my painting clothes and jump on the tube, normally heading straight to the Chelsea Arts Club. When I moved back to London I was lucky enough to be proposed and accepted as a member. Lots of young artist friends are members, and it’s truly magical.

The bar on a winter evening, the garden in the summer. No phones, and drinks so cheap guests normally ask if it’s subsidised. It’s one of the few places in London where you can genuinely have dinner and wine for 30 pounds, especially if you get the artist’s menu. It holds a special place in my heart as a sanctuary, like the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the British Museum. If I am feeling truly decadent, a dry martini at Bellamy’s truly takes the edge off the day. And you can’t beat Mauro’s spaghetti alla bottarga at Oliveto on Elizabeth Street.

Guillaume François by Gigi Ettedgui

The weekend has a different rhythm. Painting, long walks along the river with my dogs, lunch at Petersham Nurseries with friends, perhaps a Friday night martini and long Sunday lunches at home. I am deeply ritualistic; in whichever city I go, I have my favorite places that I return to, that anchor me there, whether Café de Flore in Paris, the National Gallery in London, Cammillo in Florence—they make me feel at home.

I am never happier than when travelling. If not here, I’d be at sea. In fact, my toxic trait is possibly leaving the country more often than I leave the house and I always want to move to the place that I am visiting, even if it’s just a weekend trip. I have been renovating a tiny house on the sea on a very small island in Greece, with two talented architects and designers, Themistocle Antoniadis and Dimitris Pantazopoulos, and the brilliant craftsmen and builders of Patmos and Arki. It has been a deeply personal project.

I have two current exhibitions. In April, I am part of a group exhibition at Kettles Yard, curated by Andrew Nairne. Handpicked: Painting Flowers, Kettle’s Yard. I am also very excited to be exhibiting with photographer Robin Hunter Blake, curated by Marie-Claudine Llamas of Guerin Projects, in London. I love the images Robin creates, they are so painterly, all about movement and they remind me of Francesca Woodman.

Images by Tara Duross