Richard Twose

Richard Twose (born 1963) studied 3D Design at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, in the late 1980s.

He had a successful career as a jewellery designer in London, including collections for Harvey Nichols, Harrods, Paul Smith and Margaret Howell, plus private clients including Joan Collins, Sting and Charlie Watts.

During this period, he was also a visiting lecturer at the University of Brighton and Camberwell College of Arts. In the early 2000s Richard relocated from London to a village near Bath. He now lives in Bristol.

In 2012 (and again in 2021) Richard won the Bath Society of Artists’ Painting Prize in their annual Open Exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery and was invited to become a member of the Bath Society of Artists, whose alumni include Walter Sickert and Howard Hodgkin.

In 2014 Richard won second prize at the BP Portrait Award. He was shortlisted again in 2017 for his portrait of film director Ken Loach, which was commissioned by the University of Oxford. The university has since commissioned him to paint six more portraits. His work has been shown in the National Portrait Galleries of London and Scotland and is in other private and public collections including The Holburne Museum in Bath and Marks & Spencer, Viscount Grimston and the Earl of Verulam’s collection- whose unbroken chain of portraits goes back to the 1400s and includes the oldest known portrait of an Englishman.

Other collectors include Kate and Steven Spielberg and Lord Ken MacDonald.

In 2017 he won the Royal West of England Academy’s, RWA Academy Painting Prize and in 2019 he was shortlisted for the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize. 

Richard describes his figurative paintings as “dramatic, magical realist narratives” exploring both the physical as well as the almost mystical relationship we can have with the natural world, using animal and bird motifs to suggest connection and . Inspiration comes from Greek myths, the history of art, British folklore, the circus, quantum physics and his personal history and memories.  Richard often works with circus performers and dancers, as well as friends and family, to bring his ideas to life.

Often his paintings suggest scenes from a story, leaving it up to the viewer to finish or even to invent their own narratives – what led to this moment, what will follow. “We all live by making up stories; we make sense of our lives, our place in the world, through the stories we tell others. But all stories are incomplete, fragments and imperfect.” Richard says.

Colour, line and texture are allowed to flow, often interfering with the formal subject matter. These surface qualities allow his paintings to operate on another layer of expressive sensuality.  

Ben Luke, writing in the Evening Standard, described Richard’s work as having “an elusive, poetic quality”. The art critic and broadcaster Edward Lucie-Smith called Richard “a modern master of the non-finito technique”. Jonathan Yeo picked Richard out for the CNN documentary‘Ones to Watch’. 

In 2015 he was asked by the National Gallery, London and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam to demonstrate Rembrandt’s innovative painting techniques for the Exhibitions on Screen film accompanying their seminal exhibition Rembrandt, The Late Works. 

In 2017 he was asked to give a talk at the University of Hull as part of the city’s City of Culture celebrations.

Richard was a judge for the BP Portrait Award’s Travel Award, 2016. 

He has undertaken residencies at Elisabeth Frink’s studio in Dorset (2018) and the Royal College of Art in London (2016).