Lorna May Wadsworth

As the Sheffield portrait painter readies for a major hometown retrospective, she tells us stories about approaching Margaret Thatcher and reworking the Last Supper. Interview: RACHAEL FUNNELL

- Rachael Funnell

When did you receive your first portrait commission?

When I was 14 or 15, I’d had commissions to paint people’s children. I remember one time a man in a shop got me to paint his wife from photos. He loved the painting, but when he showed it to her she hated it, so he refused to pay me. It was a really important learning curve: don’t do surprises, meet the person, work from your own photos if you can’t paint from life and, crucially, always get a deposit up front.

How do you interact with your sitters?

I guess it’s just about putting people at ease and making them feel comfortable, engaging with them on a human level like you would anybody, being interested in them and putting all of that into the work.

How have you secured so many high-profile sitters?

It was a mixture of me being ready to grab any opportunity that came at me and people’s generosity. I only painted David Blunkett because I wrote him a letter saying, “You’re not in the National Portrait Gallery and I think you should be.”