Initially, I walked the galleries looking for the people I was familiar with – the ones whose stories I knew, the ones I wondered about, the ones I would have loved to have met. And then I moved wider, using the Gallery as a way of learning about people. Wondering, as I walked and as I stared, about the faces I passed: how they fit into the history of the country, why each person was there and not someone else in their place. The faces became a dialogue, the paintings became a conversation.
