Seventy Years of Self Portraits and more…
‘Just looking with all your attention and painting what you see’ is how Philip Sutton RA describes his technique as an artist. The results are powerful. Vast euphoric celebrations of nature. Heart-stopping self-portraits and tiny, tender drawings.
At 96, Sutton still paints every day from his home near the sea at West Bay in Dorset. His work has never fitted into any box. Always totally original and true to himself, it is deservedly and gloriously celebrated.
From Saturday March 5th to Sunday May 11th, Sladers Yard in West Bay will exhibit some of his many self-portraits.
Born in 1928, Philip Sutton RA has been painting brilliantly observed paintings for the past 70 years.
Running through his work is a rich vein of self-portraits that chart his life from 1952 to the present. Sutton’s love of theatre and Shakespeare in particular, manifests in the costumes, hats, and flamboyant birds in his paintings, but most of all in his marvellously expressive face.
Undoubtedly, some of his finest paintings, the self-portraits collected in this selling exhibition range from tiny 20cm square to 120cm square, expressing every human state from wild and powerful to pitiful and deranged. The artist himself, however, is clear-headed and full of extraordinary memories and stories that chart the history of the last century. Painted with a freedom and clarity originally inspired by Matisse but always entirely his own, he conveys his poetic vision through his brush.
Philip Sutton RA Portrait of the Artist will be at Sladers Yard, West Bay, from 15 March to Sunday, 11 May.
Visit www.sladersyard.co.uk for full details.
