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Richard Sharah p r o f i l e

Hanging above Richard Sharah's desk in his large, airy West Hampstead studio is a framed drawing, apparently of Steve Strange - either that or a prototype for his singulary adventurous style of make-up In fact it's the latter, a design Sharah produced originally for Zandra Rhodes, who first started using those painted arrows and squiggles on a chalk white face, whit features violently accentuated, some seven years ago. "Steve flicked through my samples book and picked out what he liked " Richard explains in a soft, careful voice. Richard Sharah is a meke-up artist who, during his 13 years career, has made up a wide cross-section of famous faces,  from Zandra Rhodes, Jerry Hall ,  Marie Helvin  and Faye Dunaway, to the late Bing Crosby, Betty Ford and rock stars such a David Bowie, Dire Straits, Sting, Marvin Gaye and Steve Strange.

He is originally from Australia, where he studied fine arts, worked for Revlon and turned freelance, becoming involved in films ( Roger Vadim's "Night Games"  for example ) television and commercials.  But Richard felt it was all too tame and conservative and so in 1973 came to London, where he found himself working behind Dingwalls bar for a year before meeting photographer David Bailey.  "From then on work flooded in .  One minute I had nothing and the nest I had almost too much to cope with. In 1974 he teamed up with Zandra Rhodes, with whom he still works in between jetting around the world at the request of various artists and publications.  A few years ago he flew to Colorado to make up Betty Ford when her husband was President of the United States. He preferes making up women to men:  "You can use ther face as a canvas to paint and design on,  while most men just have very basic, natural make-up to cover up those little spots and pimples.  Escept people like Steve Strange and David Bowie, of course'. īDavid came to me and said he wanted a pierrot look, and let me design from there.  Most of the time I draw up some ideas and then work with the subject around those - expept with Zandra , who gives me a piece of fabric from a collection, or say a new garment, and then I design a look to go with it.   I take from her designs and transfer it onto ther face, so you get a continual theme,  But a lot of the time you're restricted by things out of your control, In advertising, for example, you have to use certain cosmetics and in high fashion at the moment you can't  really do too much because they'e all gone very natural, as you can see just by looking at magazines like Vogue

"Im moving in the opposite direction though,  in the music business, so I still have an outlet for my more bizarre ideas". He produces a beautifully detailed and coloured drawing of a face which is strngely disorientating to look at.  "You can't tell whether it's a profile or a full frontal can you ? " he asks.  " It's a tribute to Picasso, because that was the sort of Ilusion he tried to create in some of his paints.  I'd like to transfer that idea into make-up " So what does he think of the New Romantics, and their experiments with make-up and design ? 'I've got a lot of ideas from them" Richard admits, "and from punk/ new wave too.  I mean, those kid have influenced so much in fashion, through experimenting, although they didn't realise it at first.  They'e influenced me,  editors, wirters, photographers,  painters, everybody.  its a fantastic thing to see "                                                                                             THE FACE  - 1981

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