A Nottingham artist has embarked on a year-long project to create a series of portraits of local people in Beeston. Matthew Lyons has already created 20 different portraits that capture the people of the town with a hope of holding an exhibition in September.
Matthew took up painting during lockdown during the hours that he normally spent commuting to work. He began the series in September last year after he issued a call out looking for people to pose for a portrait. While he was expecting a few to be interested, he was quickly inundated with requests.
"I had been struggling to get subjects to paint so I thought I would encourage people to come forward. My first painting was of my neighbour, Gavin, who is the local postman. I posted on Facebook to ask people if they knew of anyone who would be interesting to paint or had something and I got inundated with messages," he said.
