ELECTED ARWS 2017 & RWS 2019
Jim Hunter was born and grew up in Co Durham and first attended art school at the then Teesside College of Art. He studied painting at Winchester School of Art from 1970-73, with William Crozier as Head of Fine Art and John Bellany an influential tutor, and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1976. In many ways the most significant period of study for him was the time he spent in a studio in the Cite des Arts, Paris: from this period grew his enduring interest in modernism and the potential of abstraction.
In his paintings he has always used landscape as the starting point for developing his imagery, working directly from the landscape in sketchbooks using watercolour and ink. These studies inform his studio developments which are expressive and decorative in intent and not necessarily descriptive. He prefers working with watercolour as he likes its simplicity and purity, and the purity of response that it encourages in the act of painting. He often incorporates collage and elements of pasted paper as these allow him to keep the imagery, and its potential meaning, open and provisional.
Jim has pursued his practice as a painter alongside his career in art education, retiring as Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the Arts University Bournemouth and, since 2013, Professor Emeritus of Painting.
His home and studio are in the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, and his work is often based on direct responses to this unique landscape. His recent one-person exhibition ‘Painting Purbeck’ at Sandy Hill Arts, Corfe Castle, featured paintings that were all made in walking distance from his studio.
