When artist Jaq Grantford asked ABC Classic presenter Ed Le Brocq to be the subject of a portrait, Le Brocq made one request:
"I asked if [Grantford] could paint me as a centaur."
She accepted the challenge — and it paid off.
The portrait, Ed Le Brocq: I am a centaur, is a finalist in the 2024 Archibald Prize. But it hasn't just won judges' hearts.
"When I saw the painting, I actually burst into tears," Le Brocq says.
"Jaq has absolutely captured the true me."
Why the centaur?
Many might know centaurs from the Harry Potter series where half-men, half-horse beings roam the Forbidden Forest, dispensing cryptic advice and riding in at critical moments.
But their origin story goes as far back as Greek mythology.
For Le Brocq, there's one particular centaur whose story is intertwined with his own: Chiron, the first centaur, who chose wisdom and knowledge over violence.
Chiron was a renowned teacher and mentor to many Greek heroes, immortalised in the constellation Centaurus.
"My wife, Charlie, who is an astrologer, calls me her centaur," Le Brocq shares.
For the couple, this nickname symbolises Le Brocq's gender affirmation journey, and his acceptance of his true self.
Becoming the centaur
In 2016, Le Brocq, who is a transgender man, publicly affirmed his gender and changed his name to Ed Ayres. He then adopted his wife's surname when the couple married in 2022.
He shares his experience of being transgender in his 2021 memoir, Whole Notes.
Growing up in the UK during the 1970s, Le Brocq was persuaded to learn the violin because of the perception that it was a "girl's" instrument. He actually wanted to learn the cello, but it was deemed too boyish.
Le Brocq eventually fell in love with the viola which, with its bigger body and deeper tone, he describes as "a perfect depiction of being trans".
Le Brocq met his wife Charlie Le Brocq while playing his viola, and she's since been a constant source of support to him, including during his gender affirmation journey.
"Charlie was always there, lifting me up when I fell, reminding me … just like my viola playing, I had to accept who I was becoming, and remember my true nature," Le Brocq wrote in his memoir.
How Grantford transformed Le Brocq into a centaur
Grantford's portrait of Play School entertainer Noni Hazlehurst won the People's Choice Awards in the 2023 Archibald prize. But she jokes that her true category is the "persistence award" for entering the competition year after year.
A lifelong music-lover, Grantford has portrayed numerous musicians in her portraits, including street pianist Natalie Trayling and Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin.
This is the second time Le Brocq has sat for Grantford.
The pair met through the Hush Foundation, a Melbourne-based project which aims to use the arts to improve the experiences of patients in hospital.
To portray Le Brocq as a centaur, Grantford enlisted Jaspar, a chestnut horse belonging to her friend. She used sketches and photos to work out the proportions for both man and animal before transferring them to paint.
"When I Googled 'centaurs' there was so much discrepancy in the ratio of human to horse so I had to play a lot with what would work with Ed's body shape," she explains.
But the essence of the painting was simple.
"Ed and I chose a pose that sat well and looked right," Grantford says.
"It suited that sense of being out in the dust," Grantford says, in reference to Le Brocq's past adventures, including cycling from London to Hong Kong and teaching music in Afghanistan.
For Grantford, the centaur represents a strong creature of endurance, but hasn't lost touch with the softer things in life.
The portrait shows Le Brocq's scars from chest-surgery; Grantford calls them "his battle scars".
She added a tattoo on the centaur's back, which combines the dharma wheel and a lotus to symbolise "spiritual change and rebirth".
Grantford says telling Le Brocq's story through her portrait was very personal, as one of her children is transgender.
"Painting Ed is a way for me to support the trans community and also my beautiful [child]," she says.
The centaur she has created is strong and proud, just as its subject.
As Le Brocq writes in Whole Notes: "A trans man is not a lesser man, a masculine woman or a mental illness. I am a centaur, and how f***ing cool is that."