Originally from Greater Manchester, Tom Cartmill has spent much of his adult life overseas, with years in New Zealand and more recently, in Southern Spain and Sicily. His time in Southern Europe, where he became interested in the Moorish heritage, in particular the underlying ideas and artistic principles, has been a major influence on his work. Now settled in the UK, he works from a farm-based studio outside Reading in SE England, from where his sculptural drawings and mixed media work are gaining increasing recognition.
Tom exhibits widely and regularly, some of his more notable exhibitions include the Derwent Art Prize (2022 & 2016), The Royal Scottish Academy (2024, 2022, 2021 & 2020; The Royal West of England Academy (2024, 2023, 2022, 2019, 2017 & 2016); The Royal Academy, London (2024, 2017 & 2016). In 2017, he won Rabley Gallery’s Editioning Prize, seeing the development and launch of a print edition at the London Original Print Fair at The Royal Academy of Arts, in 2018.Amongst other exhibitions, his drawings have been selected for The London Group Open, Wells Art Contemporary, The National Open Art Exhibition, The Discerning Eye, The Art Gemini Prize and the The New Art Prize, which toured the UK during 2020 and 2021. In 2022, on the strength of his submitted mixed media works, Tom was selected as a 'Future Now Artist' for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2022 (this comes after a prior selection in 2019 for his submission of drawings).Change through time and the inevitable accumulation of experience are themes that have underpinned my practice from early on. The way that buildings and much used objects age, weathering and transforming with the passage of time, is a constant source of inspiration. I work at evoking a ‘patina of experience' in my pictures. This directly relates to the methods used to make my work, where I combine conventional painting techniques with more innovative processes: Layers of media are built up, to be abraded, worn through and overlaid yet again, mirroring the passage of time and giving glimpses of the unfolding story of the making of the work itself.
As well as an abiding interested in visual perception, I am interested in the function of memory, in particular, the fact that our understanding of the world around us (people, places, concepts) is filtered or conditoned through our memories. There also seems to be a connection that, however much we toil to comprehend and to broaden our knowledge, our understanding will never be whole.
Tom Cartmill, 2020