Acrylic and spray paint on canvas

40 x 40 cm

Signed on verso

The Reverend depicted here isn't a man of the church. I'm not sure how rock & roller Jon McClure got his nickname, but it stuck, and he called his band Reverend and the Makers. We grew up in the same village - Grenoside on the outskirts of Sheffield.

A friend of The Arctic Monkeys (Alex Turner features on early demos), the band were fending off record companies offering wads of money around 2006 for them to make a record that sounded just like their fellow Sheffielders. Jon is a singular young man and wanted to do everything his own way, so gave them all short shrift and managed to sell out Sheffield venue The Plug twice (capacity 1000) whilst still unsigned. (See my Arctic Monkey's painting set there).

This portrait was created from snaps and sketches done at some secret gig around that time. The buzz around them was huge. Somehow, I found myself in Sheffield and in a room with Jon and his hero, performance poet John Cooper Clarke, taking it in turns on a microphone under a solitary lightbulb. Caravaggio meets Banksy.

I think this is my first foray into stencil painting. I used it later in my 2010-11 Fashion Martyr series with 'Banksy Slave', where I wanted to create the impression that someone had graffitied over a 'masterpiece'. Jon's bone structure under the strong single light source, along with his punk ethos and street smarts, just called out to use this medium. I did a couple of colour ways, and this was my favourite.