Chris Gollon used music in three different way, sometimes as a yardstick for the painting he was working on, so if the painting did not have the same energy as the music, he knew it needed re-working. Other times it would be a lyric or the title of a song that would lead (as here) to the idea for a painting, without being in any way illustrative. The third way was direct collaboration with a living musician or songwriter or composer, as he did with Thurston Moore, Yi Yao and Eleanor McEvoy.
This figure certainly has the same free and wild spirit as the subject of Wilson Pickett's famous song. Chris was a master of black, and used flat areas of it poetically, like Matisse used blue.
In this painting, and a few at this period, Chris was re-looking at his various techniques, after art historian Tamsin Pickeral's book on his life and work was published in 2010 'CHRIS GOLLON: Humanity in Art' endorsed by Bill Bryson OBE (available from our online shop).
Chris worked mainly in acrylic, innovating constantly, by using printmakers' techniques or those of Old Masters in this modern media, very successfully. In this painting, he painted oil over acrylic to great effect.