Saied Dai
Saied Dai is Persian by birth, Saied Dai was born in Tehran in 1958 and came to England at the age of six.
He began his seven years of art training at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design and shortly after was awarded a place at the Royal Academy of Arts for his postgraduate studies. There, he was privileged to come into contact with artists of real distinction such as Peter Greenham, Norman Blamey and Roderic Barrett.
He was regarded well enough to be invited back to the RA Schools to teach under Leonard McComb’s Keepership, where drawing was seen to be the cornerstone of all the disciplines. He says, “I was fortunate enough to be taught art as architecture. Drawing reveals the way an artist thinks. It is the means by which one makes visual relationships.”
On recommendation from Norman Blamey RA, Saied was also placed to teach at the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture in Regent’s Park at its idealistic inception.
After being elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2004, he won the prestigious Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture and the Society’s Gold Medal in 2006, followed by the Prince of Wales Drawing Award in 2007.
Dominic Grant
From 1970 to 1973, Dominic was greatly inspired when hewas living in the beautiful surroundings of Trasteverie, in the old quarter of Rome. Dominic began to develop a range of figurative bronzes capturing the essence of memories taken from his theatrical background and life experiences. Inspired by his love of movement and expression his work encapsulates the expressive emotion of the body, from a ballet dancer twirling a ribbon to his individual theatrical characters.
In the past few years, Dominic's sculptures have been exhibited in London, Amsterdam, Marbella, Mayfair, Monte Carlo and Portafino. His recent success has also led to commissions by the London Palladadium for a bust of BRUCE FORSYTH, by Sony for a bust of BARBRA STREISAND and for sports giants O'NEILL for whom hesculpted 'The Surfer'..
Katya Gridneva
Katya Gridneva works mainly in oils, pastels and charcoal, focusing on figurative subjects. Her very skillful, characterful and attractive compositions are painted from life. Her work not only captures the flow of light across her subjects, but also exhibits her in-depth knowledge of the anatomical structure of the human body. She takes a special delight in painting the working bodies of dancers, capturing their grace and elegance. Click to Hide
Katya was born in 1965 in the Ukraine. She started drawing classes at the world renowned Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg in 1991 and went on to begin the full art course in 1993. She graduated in June 1999. Later that year she came to England where she now lives.
Katya’s work has been very widely exhibited in the UK and internationally to high critical and public acclaim.
Peter Kuhfeld
(Born 1952)
Painter of landscapes, townscapes, portraits and interiors in oils. Born in Cheltenham, he trained at Leicester Polytechnic from 1972-1976 and at the RA Schools under Peter Greenham from 1977-1980 where he was awarded the David Murray Landscape Prize.1978 and 1979, a silver medal for drawing and the Dooley Prize for anatomical drawing.
Between 1980 and 1981, he also received the Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Scholarship and the Richard Ford Scholarship to Spain. He held his first solo exhibition at the Highgate Gallery, London, in 1983 and he has subsequently exhibited in London galleries including the New Grafton Gallery, at the RA from 1978, at the RWA, RP and in the provinces. From 1976 to 1978 he taught at Rugby School of Art and in 1978 was made a Freeman of The Worshipful Company of Painters and Stainers. His cool toned, observant paintings combine detail with a broad technique, depicting form in terms of light and colour.
Roy Petley paints light; it is his passion. Every image he creates is alive with light; it reveals and conceals, taking possession of space. Whether he is painting sky, water or the human figure he uses a mass of colours revealing them through subdued lights. These colours, which arethe very material of which the light is made, pulsate with life. Roy interprets rather than reproduces nature. He does not take the viewer by the hand and point out every nuance of the view before him. He hints and cajoles; this is poetry rather than pedantry. A subject as prosaic as a Norfolk village is rendered poetic by his form, his colours and, most especially, his light. Following in the tradition of John Constable, John Sell Coteman and Edward Seago, Petley summons up the drama and lowering threat of those huge Norfolk skies which relegate mankind to a walk-on role. In depicting nature versus man he establishes an empathy with the viewer; there is almost a ‘madeleine-moment’ when we are taken back to a shared experience and want to say ‘Yes, it was justlike that!’ Constable said that he had never seen an ugly thing in his life because whatever forman object might take ‘light, shade and perspective’ would always render it beautiful. Likewise Petley’ssense of beauty is not that of the object itself but of light and shade. In his nudes the figures and the backgrounds constitute a whole; the same light which caresses the female figure also caresses the background features. At the same time he casts light as a player in the mise-en-scène of his painting, especially when he places his models contre-jour. The resulting translucence renders the nudes ethereal, almost otherworldly; they have an innocence which beguiles. There is a stillness about them which renders them unthreatening to the viewer; thereis no interchange, no sexual connotation. When he wishes to emphasise the sensual, rather than the sexual, Roy executes his nudes in sanguine. The figures in his pastoral scenes have a romantic, idealised, out-of-time quality which is veryappealing and, again, veryseductive. Wewish to share the same time and the same place with these people; we wish to be a part of the scene. This is Roy’s gift, he is able to render what he sees around him with such a straightforward and uncritical eye that we, the onlookers, are seduced into sharing with him his optimistic
, unclouded view of the world.
Vicente Romero Redondo was born in 1956 in Madrid as the eldest of four sons. Due to the work of his father, he grew up in many different towns all over Spain. The family moved back to Madrid when he was 15 years old. During his childhood, his parents thought he would dedicate his life to painting, as his caricatures of schoolmates and teachers were famous in every school where he studied and one would rarely see him without a pencil and a notepad in his hands. Romero achieved his dream: he began studies at the High School for Art San Fernando, the most prestigious art school in Spain (Salvador Dali studied there from 1922-1926). During his first years he dedicated his time to sculpture, but soon realized that only by painting could he express all the sensibility he possessed and needed to transmit. He graduated with special honors in 1982. Then he spent several years working on the street, not the most comfortable but surely the most efficient way to perfect his technique. He painted pastel portraits in coast villages of the mainland and the islands of Tenerife, Majorca and Ibiza. At the close of the eighties, Romero and his wife settled in the Costa Brava. It was in this region (the birthplace of Dali) that a new stage of his artistic life began. The light of the Mediterranean, his skills, his passion, the wonderful landscape, the house with patio where he lived and the beauty of his models--all these were perfect conditions to change his paintings, and finally he succeeded in converting intimate situations of life into the leitmotif of his art. Since the early 90s Romero's paintings have been shown in individual expositions in Spain, France and Portugal. In 2001 he moved to Madrid, but he spends time as well in the Costa Brava with its incredible light, one of the most identifiable aspects of his work.
Yuri Krotov (b.1964)
Born Krasnador, Russia but is now based in Moscow. Studied at the Moscow Art College and Moscow Surikov Academy of Fine Art. Usually paints in the impressionist style in oils which are colourful and full of warmth. His work is popular throughout Europe and America and he has exhibited widely throughout Europe and Russia.
Martin Yeoman was born in 1953. He trained from 1975-1979 at the Royal Academy Schools, London. Among his commissions to date are Her Majesty The Queen's grandchildren, Sir Alan Hodgkin OM, Sir Brinsley Ford and the former Bishop of Birmingham Hugh Montefiori.Winner of the 2002 Ondaatje Portrait Prize, his work is both painterly and poetic. He is considered by many to be one of the finest draughtsmen working today and is sought after by artists and collectors alike.
He has accompanied HRH Prince of Wales on official overseas tours to India, Hong Kong and the Gulf States.
John Yardley
Watercolour is regarded by many as the most demanding of mediums; there is little or no margin for error once the picture is begun, nor is there time for prevarication. In its purest form a watercolour is an expression of an expert and confident hand capable of controlling washes and highlights with apparent ease. Such control does not come quickly or easily; it is the result of many years’ careful application and dedication and there can be no better example of this than the work of John Yardley.
Since John began painting full-time over 30 years ago he has achieved national recognition for his distinctive watercolours through one-man and group exhibitions, books, videos and his very popular painting courses, which are constantly over-subscribed. Throughout those years he has maintained a remarkable level of consistency, painting to the highest possible standard at all times with the freshness and spontaneity that are amongst his hallmarks.
Admired and praised by collectors and recognized by his contemporarie John makes it all seem so effortless; complex background detail is merely suggested but it is nevertheless there for all to see, depth and perspective are created by dramatic contrasts of light and shade, whilst understated but highly effective figures bring each scene to life.
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