All but one of Iceland’s professional drone fliers turned down the proposal, then after lugging an easel up the slopes of the volcano “for miles through all the gas, the drone couldn’t lift the canvas, [because] of this tiny little bit of wind”. The next day, though, they tried again, and it worked perfectly, as YouTube can attest. It was a financial success, too, with the NFT selling for £125,000. Yet Denison-Pender says, “I don’t think I’m going to do another NFT for a long time. It takes away from the other ideas I have.”
These include the portraits of athletes in competition that he had hoped to paint as one of the two official artists of the GB Olympics team in 2020, a role that was derailed by Covid protocols when the Games took place in Tokyo earlier this year. He has made up for it with the large painting of Anthony Joshua that will appear in Perseverance, an exhibition which showcases his instinctive talent as a painter, especially his unselfconscious love of colour.
On the wall is a large whiteboard with Denison-Pender’s elaborate five-year plan towards an exhibition which he intends to feature works created in extreme locations around the world. If the chance came to go to space, he’d jump at that, too, of course. As for Jenny McGee, the unexpected day in the studio came as something of a relief from the trauma of intensive care. “January, February of this year is what really took a toll on me,” she tells me. “The second wave was so much worse than the first.” Next year, at last, she is being allowed to fly back home to New Zealand to see her family.
And the portraits of her and Luís? After a request from No 10, they went on display outside Boris’s office for six months, after which they were auctioned off and raised more than £3,500 for charity. A document of our time.
Max Denison-Pender: Persevere is at Richard Green, W1 from Dec 2 until Dec 10
