Paul McPhail was an award-winning student at Glasgow School of Art where he undertook postgraduate studies in 1990. The long-term partner of painter Jenny Saville, his own style belongs to the powerful uncompromising school of realism that characterises Saville’s work and the two artists have had a significant mutual influence on each other.
The title of his portrait ‘Sparra’ is an acronym for Scottish Patients at Risk of Readmission and Admission, a risk prediction tool developed in Scotland which predicts an individual’s risk of being admitted to hospital as an emergency inpatient.