tom elliott

Tom was born in London in 1965, educated in Bath, and studied painting Bath College of Higher education at Sydney Place and at Bower Ashton College, Bristol. Early on he visited Italy, Holland and The Hague to study Renaissance and seventeenth century paintings at first-hand, and this started his life-long interest in art history.

Tom's paintings represent a modern hybrid of traditional still lifes; objects are composed and placed in rooms or settings often adapted from the work of de Hooch, Hoogstraten and Bonnard. This contemporary take marries the old with the new to suggest a broader context in which to discover still life elements like food, ephemera and toys. He uses metallic leaf and sand to augment his textural effects. The changes of scale he employs is a modern feature that plays on our perceptions in order to refresh our impressions of what life has gone before and what might happen next. His figures are inspired by friends, and in groups they strive for psychological understanding in their relationships -- often sharing eye lines with pet animals that are given sentience. People may be dressed in the costumes of other periods, such as Picasso's harlequins. The titles of his paintings and their human stories suggest moments of self-identification. Strange effects with reflection, light and shadow give Tom's paintings a strong imaginative charge, and sometimes the viewer has a sensation of déjà vu.

Tom has exhibited widely in Bath and the South West, and popularly with the Bath Society of Artists, as a result of which he was awarded the Andrew Brownsword Prize in 2000 with special mention of his commitment to his work. He is also known for successful solo exhibitions at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, and his work was the first contemporary painting exhibition chosen for Dyrham Park House in Wiltshire.




CV below.....

A Couple of Galsses - Acrylic