David Bailey's iconic portraits, now transformed, serve as the foundation for his new series of overpainted photographs. Paying homage to his groundbreaking portraits while reworking them through a fresh perspective suggests a profound reflection of one of the most influential photography artists of the modern age.

To look again, turn inward, and re-envision works of the past allows for a sense of contemplation and artistic retrospection. The overpainted photographs are bound to Bailey's practice, drawing together two prominent modes in his oeuvre: photography and painting. These overpainted photographs have evolved in periods when Bailey turned to painting after working on other major photographic series. Here, he plays upon the concept of 'painting after photography'. Bailey subsumes painting into a photographic image by literally painting after and over the image.

The gestural marks on the surface are the cumulative trace of the artist's movements—each brushstroke, drip, or sweep of paint is a record of the artist's hand. The energy, delicacy, and spontaneity of brushwork convey an aesthetic impulse and element of chance in a way that transcends the pure representation of the photographic portrait into abstract materiality.

An expression of gestural abstraction as an act of catharsis, perhaps, from the constraints of the camera. Just as the photograph captures the decisive moment—a direct imprint of a frozen moment in reality—the painting marks an accumulation of moments, an unfolding of the artist's process. The final image is not a moment in time; rather, it embodies an entire temporal journey of its creation.