Top 25 British Contemporary Figurative Painters

3. Glenn Brown

Glenn Brown, born in Hexham, England, lives and works in London and Suffolk, England. Brown has distinguished himself with his dynamic trompe-l’oeils of heavy impastos, which in reality are smooth two-dimensional strokes of paint.

With this characteristic imagery, Brown examines art history and popular culture and found images as source material to distort and manipulate. Brown often takes on classical paintings or poses with his colorful and eclectic style.[4]

For further reading, we highly recommend the recently published Glenn Brown: And Thus we Existed.

4. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, born in 1977 in London, England, resides and works in London, England. The internationally reputed artist is known for her captivating imagery of mostly black human figures in isolated and dark backgrounds.

The Future Generation Art Prize-winner follows her natural intuition when painting, marked by delicate and robust brushstrokes. As a black female artist, one interprets her works from a socio-political and activist perspective. However, the starting point is always the language of painting and its history.[5]

Discover more works by reading our artist spotlight on Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, or have a look at her recently published monograph Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in the League of the Night.

5. Chris Ofili

Chris Ofili, born in 1968 in Manchester, England, resides and works in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and Tobago. The British painter is known for his colorful palette and textures via collages of glitter, dots, and more, resulting in impressive and characteristic tableaus.[6]

The YBA (Young British Artists) Turner Prize-Winner examines Nigerian history, African culture, black stereotypes, and exoticism in a narrative inspired by various issues such as religion, film, popular culture, and personal experiences.[7] For further reading, I strongly recommend Chris Ofili: Night and Day.

6. Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville, born in 1970 in Cambridge, England, resides and works in Oxford, England. Saville, an original YBA member, is known for her captivating paintings, merging a Rubens-like appetite for voluptuous bodies with Cubism, American abstraction, and photographic figuration.[8]

The works by the hand of the British painter are characterized by her fascination and pathological perceptions of the body. As a result, Saville depicts meaty and grotesque human bodies, mostly female. Issues such as obesity, gender binary, beauty ideal, the individual perception of the body, and more, are discussed in a dialogue dominated by the flesh.[9]

Read Jenny Saville to discover more works by the charismatic female artist.

7. Mark Alexander

Mark Alexander, born in 1966 in Horsham, West Sussex, England, resides and works in Berlin, Germany.

His work is marked by his reinterpretations of iconic images of the past, such as cultural objects such as the Shield of Achilles or famous portraits. His paintings are characterized by labor-intensive brushwork. These meticulously rendered paintings combine classicism, photography, and contemporary photorealism.

8. Nigel Cooke

Nigel Cooke, born in Manchester, England, resides and works in Kent, England. Cooke is known for his atmospheric paintings, depicting figures woven into their environment.

The British painter balances between figuration and abstraction, resulting in a distorted visual language. This fragmentation results in a certain ambiguity, where one is not sure anymore if the painting is a portrait, a landscape, a still life, a figurative painting, or an abstract composition.[10]

For further reading, discover more works in the monograph Nigel Cooke: Painting.

9. Kaye Donachie

Kaye Donachie, born in Glasgow, Scotland, lives and works in London, England.

Donachie is known for her portraits, primarily of female figures and leaders, rendered in muted skin tone and cold tones. One can not help but point out the mysterious character of her works. The images have a dreamlike quality, drifting between reality and utopia, rejecting the possibility of a narrative.[11]

12. Caroline Walker

Caroline Walker was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, and lives and works in London, England. Walker is known for her intimate and often large in scale paintings of women in domestic scenes of everyday life.

Her works cross the boundaries of the public and the private, leaving the viewer feeling like a voyeur gazing into the private spheres of the depicted subject. Her paintings have a strong narrative character, although the psychological narrative seems to subvert the primary setting. As a result, Walker explores gender identity, femininity, and the socio-economic position of women.[14]

Discover her works in the monograph Caroline Walker: Janet.

14. Paul Winstanley

Paul Winstanley, born in 1954 in Manchester, England, lives and works in London, England.

The British painter has established himself as one of the most important painters with his characteristic painted images of so-called semi-public spaces. Winstanley depicts a series of works examining rooms such as lobbies, airports, waiting rooms, et cetera.[16]

Discover 59 paintings by Paul Winstanley by reading his publication Paul Winstanley: 59 Paintings: In which the Artist Considers the Proces of Thinking about and Making Work.

15. Clare Woods

Clare Woods, born in Southampton, England, lives and works in Hereford, England. She is known for sculpting images in paint, resulting in large-scale and voluptuous impasto paintings.

Woods is trained as a sculptor resulting in a very physical manner in which she applies paint onto the canvas. She translates her sculptural language into two-dimensional imagery, tackling topics such as fragility, vulnerability, mortality, and disability.[17]

16. Gillian Carnegie

Gillian Carnegie, born in Suffolk, England, lives and works in London, England.

Often following the traditional categories of painting, Carnegie occupies herself with still life painting, landscapes, figure painting, and portraiture with a contemporary twist. Her representational visual language is characterized by the reflective nature of her painted subjects.

17. Ken Currie

Ken Currie, born in North Shield, England, lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. The Scottish artist is known for his unsettling paintings of human figures.

Currie’s works are marked by figuration, fear, and violence. The Glasgow School of Art graduate, who emerged from the so-called New Glasgow Boys in the 80s, tackles the horrors of today and how we experience these horrors. Flesh, blood, and meat are the main protagonists in his dark and surreal settings.[18]

18. Laura Lancaster

Laura Lancaster was born in Hartlepool, England. She lives and works in Newcastle, England. Lancaster makes paintings from found images such as photographs and stills from films.

The balance of figuration and abstraction characterizes the works of the British painter. The abstraction of the brushstrokes often takes over the image. However, the figuration remains present and functions as a guideline for the composition, resulting in a dreamlike vision.[19]

20. Christopher Orr

Christopher Orr, born in Helensburgh, Scotland, lives and works in London, England. Orr’s paintings invite us into an entirely different world, marked by the sublime, beauty, and the inexplicable seductive character of virtuoso brushstrokes, which makes us fall in love with a painting over and over again.

Christopher Orr depicts idyll scenes such as landscapes, forests, and more. Most often small in scale, the paintings carry a certain intimacy. The romantic nature of his images is juxtaposed with the postmodern and eclectic character of the subject depicted in these idyll scenes, resulting in often subtle surrealistic analogies and readings.[20]

22. Jonathan Wateridge

Jonathan Wateridge, born in Lusaka, Zambia, lives and works in Norfolk, England. His paintings seem to be documentation or a snapshot of certain narrative events, such as people bathing or having a nap. However, these images are artificially created, so-called non-event directed by the artist.

Wateridge recreates a specific scenario in which he builds a full-scale set of the surroundings populated by performers enacting certain roles. This process takes place in the artist’s studio. The images are often banal and a depiction of everyday life.[22]

Fur further reading, we highly recommend the monographic publication Jonathan Wateridge: Enclave/Expatria.

23. Richard Wathen

Richard Wathen, born in London, England, lives and works in Suffolk, England.

Wathen’s paintings depict subjects in a pose of isolation in a monochromatic and flat space. The British artist paints these figures gazing directly at the viewer. Further, when one looks more closely, certain elements are off in the paintings, which results in a series of unanswered questions.

We highly recommend the monograph Richard Wathen: New Eyes Every Time for further reading.

24. Alison Watt

Alison Watt, born in Greenock, Scotland, lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Watt is known for her naturalistic paintings of draperies and figures. She approaches these draperies as an interplay between abstraction and figuration. The winner of the Portrait Award of the National Portrait Gallery takes a minimalistic approach to these objects, searching for new understandings of their form.[23]