You are quite right about that, Paul. There is something decidedly
sly about Fabian. Though he was perfectly civil throughout the portrait painting process, I always felt there was some other agenda at play there. A case of "What you see is
not necessarily what you get." I just put it down to the fact that he was a bloke in a nun's habit, something with which I was a little ill at ease, but I suspect there was more to it than that. He is indisputably a rampant extrovert and attention seeker. I'm sure Fabian himself would agree with that. His eccentric grandstanding has certainly brought him much fame (infamy?) here in Oz. Another feeling I got at the time was that Fabian wasn't actually comfortable in a nun's habit. I felt that he needed to maintain his celebrity status (the only way he knew how to do that was through the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence), whilst secretly craving fame in his own right, minus the habit. Fabian comes from a traditional Italian Catholic family. Unlike many of the Sisters, he was genuinely religious, albeit in his own inimitably unique and imaginative way. Shortly after I painted his portrait, he renounced the Catholic Church and converted to Protestantism, foregoing his habit forever. With this act, he instantly lost his celebrity status in the community and flung himself into the Stygian Pit of anonymity, from whence he has never returned. Maybe that was on his mind when I painted his portrait back in the mid-90s. I'll never know.
Thank you for your kind words, Paul. Please drop into the gallery again, when next you're passing this way.