Matthew Carr, 1953-2011

“He continued to work, but the alcohol and drugs took their toll on his health and his art. By the mid-1990s he was down to 8½ stone, and, by his own account, ‘doing stupid things’ — though, as he later explained, he realised he had hit rock bottom only when he accepted a commission to paint the singer Diana Ross. ‘A week after she’d gone I received a big, brown manila envelope in the mail. It was filled with lurid images of sunsets and palm fronds. She wanted me to put them in the background.’ To his shame, he obliged.”
 — The Telegraph’s obituary of the artist Matthew Carr, who died last month at the age of 57, is a thing of wonder.