DEUXIÈME DOSE took its place in an unplanned but nonetheless clear arc of progression. Many of Povey’s paintings of 2019 to 2020 included the entire bodies of figures. From 2020 to 2024 they showed the upper half of figures and involved complex still lifes, and in late 2024 Povey began a collection that limited him to the face alone. He was cutting back to the emotional essentials.



These paintings presented the face on a larger scale but often deliberately obscured, using paper, photographs, spoons and other items as metaphors of various psychological states.



For DEUXIÈME DOSE he travelled from England to Austin, Texas to photograph his only model, the writer Andrea Harper. She was carefully lit and posed in a prone position and provided with a visualization so that during the photo shoot she was “in another place“, concentrating on memories and regrets. He had asked her to consider what her addictions were. Thinking? Television? Her phone? Constant movement? Work? What does she depend upon to distract her from that fundamental human agitation? 

In other words, we might all ask ourselves, what is our prison? ...the one built from necessary distractions?

Povey uses Raphael‘s palette from his altarpieces made around 1500, which he studied, reproduced and tubed to provide his figures with a sense of mortality, except that in a very contemporary manner he uses layered coloured glazes to emphasise the viscerally living quality of his human figures.