Tim Wright was born and grew up in London, where he continues to live and work. In the mid 1980s he graduated in Fine Art from Middlesex University. His early paintings displayed an interest in the figure and explored its fragmentation through a vigorous painting process. The body, the observed world and their expression through paint continue to assert themselves. His practice has developed along two strands : the portrait and figure painting. Although one informs the other, they are separate and discreet. The portraits are concerned with capturing likeness and expressing personality. The figure painting allows for the exploration of other, broader themes.
Tim Wright has exhibited extensively and his work features in many collections, both in the UK and internationally. Most recently he has had a number of solo exhibitions with Shine Artists in Albemarle Street London, featured in the 2014 BP Portrait Award at The National Portrait Gallery, shown portraits at Petworth House in Sussex and Burgh House in London.
He has a long experience of teaching and lecturing. He worked as a fine art lecturer at most of the principal London art colleges, particularly Chelsea School of Art, Middlesex University and The Motley Theatre Design School. He continues to teach courses in painting at his studio in London.
From 2011 until 2013 he was engaged as painting consultant on the Mike Leigh directed film 'Mr Turner'. He taught the actor Timothy Spall to paint, in order for him to prepare for the role, and, when filming began, advised him and other actors on set. This was a an immersive process which lasted for over two years.
In his figure paintings he investigates several themes and over recent years he has explored ideas about how people present themselves, how groups interact, notions of stillness and display, and the clothed and unclothed.
Wright's more recent works have seen a refocus of his gestural, fluid forms away from the human body and towards the innanimate object — that of an elaborately carved Rococo frame. Together with what is contained, the frame variously suggests an aperture, an eye, a lens or a mirror. It is also a gateway through which information is transmitted and transformed. The device draws and focusses attention to an inchoate vortex of paint onto which viewers can project their own imaginings. The foliated ellipse sits in a sea of turbulent and expressively-handled paint, whose films, skins and veils articulate the mist, spray and vapour of an elemental and unknown landscape.
The paintings make oblique reference to the disturbing worlds of Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass”, Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” and Turner’s late-period sea-pieces.
