Ali Erkekli
The dreamer
A lifelong Red since 1981, creative and collector, Ali conceived the painting and spent years researching its 106 subjects.
How it began
A dream made real
For many years long-time Liverpool FC fan Ali Erkekli assembed a large amount of club memorabilia to fulfil a dream.
This dream was to put together a fantasy team image where many of the legendary LFC players, and other important personnel, who have graced the club since it was created in 1892 could be assembled together in a single image celebration of the abundant talent that has defined the history of the club.
The idea was borne out of the desire to have all our champions, legends, and long-time servants assembled together as if "time travel" were possible, and the painting was to encapsulate all that is grand & majestic about Liverpool FC.
There have been previous attempts to collage together photographs of players using digital technology. but due to the disparate sources of the images and the difficulties of getting them all to match, the results have never been very successful.
Ali's dream was to create a mural-sized painting of 5.5m x 2.5m using the traditional medium of oil on canvas to realistically represent the players as if they are posing together for a team photo. As far as he was aware the idea has never been done before.
He painstakingly assembled together images of 106 players, coaches & managers and organised them into a team photo of five rows and the final 106 was chosen in respect of their grand service to Liverpool FC. He have decided to have 96 players, in symbolic tribute to the unfortunate supporters who passed away at Hillsborough and another 10 mangers and officials who were intrinsic to the formation, character and reputation of the the club that it deserves today.
In early 2015 Ali found an artist who he thought could help realise his dream but after a promising start (and thousands of dollars paid) the artist suffered an unfortunate breakdown and withdrew from the project, but not before sabotaging the work they had done thus far leaving Ali with a partially-completed and unsalvageable area of canvas.
His dream remained just that until Ali met another 2 passionate LFC fans, Triffin Dalikouras & Jim Kellam, who immediately loved his idea and said they would help him to re-kindle the project. After numerous meetings and ideas they finally had a coherent plan in place.
Ali looked around at other painters and found Mattie Walsh (a Melbourne artist who is, handily enough, also an LFC fan) - and after discussing what needed to be done to make his dream a reality, and how to do it, work started on the painting version 2 in September of 2016.
And here we are in April 2017, 125 years after Liverpool FC was formed, and the Legends Of Anfield Painting is now a reality.
So there is the story of this one-of-a-kind piece of artwork - we hope you enjoy it.
Ali, Trif & Jim #YNWA
