Tom Hughes is a self-taught painter based in Bristol with a studio space in Jamaica Street Studios, one of the city’s main artist communities. Starting his career as an illustrator, Tom turned to painting full time in 2012.
“My practice evolved from painting exclusively from life for five years, before exploring in the studio everything I had learned on location. I’m interested in capturing reality with oil paint, but I also want to render the poetry of my subject. To make something with soul.”
One of Tom’s most recent bodies of work is a series of small oil paintings of quintessentially British beach huts. Captured at sunrise, most of the scenes are plunged in blue shadow apart from an area of each hut that glows in the sun’s first golden rays. Towels, striped windbreakers and deckchairs evoke the promise of a day ahead on the beach.
Tom has won multiple awards including prizes from The Discerning Eye and the coveted Critics Prize from the New English Art Club and his work is held in a host of private and public collections, including Brunel University. Tom’s paintings have been selected for many national open exhibitions including four selections for The Lynne Painter Stainers Prize and three showings at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. In 2014 his painting Self-Portrait with Turquoise Tee was shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award. Recent gallery exhibitions include two solo shows with Panter & Hall in London. His work was exhibited in the joint Gala Fine Art/ArtDog London group show Near and Far at Ballroom Arts in Aldeburgh in August 2022.
