Collection: Philip Stuttard Artist Biography and Art Gallery Collection

Philip Stuttard is a British Artist who creates artwork that is lighthearted and playful while still retaining the beauty and skill of fine art. Born into an artistic family, Philip Stuttard spent his youth nurturing his passion for art. During his childhood, he relates, "I seemed to be constantly trying to hunt down scraps of paper to draw on; there never seemed to be enough available!" By the time he was 10 years old, Stuttard knew he wanted to be an artist. With talent and good fortune, he has been able to do so. Living in London in his early twenties, he spent a few years as a freelance cartoonist, often contributing to major publications such as The Daily Times and specializing in airbrush art. Philip Stuttard airbrushed anything he could trash cans, motorcycles, computers, guitars, stage backdrops, and leather jackets. His friends asked him to decorate their belongings and he obliged, always happy to leave his artistic mark. In 2001, he moved to Yorkshire, where his interest in painting landscapes and rural scenes grew. Philip Stuttard paints these scenes and the people in them with a humorous tint and he hopes "that I manage to capture the dignity and pride of the mill, mine, and factory workers, but I also would like to think that could they see my work, it would have made them smile."

Philip Stuttard not only puts the viewer’s emotions at the heart of his every piece, sculptured or painted, yet he hopes that his work manages to capture the dignity and pride of the mills and the industrial, working class communities that he dedicates his time to originating on his canvases and through the manipulation of the tin. Stuttard is adamant that his fundamental desires are to cement the emotions, feelings, hopes and fears of factory and mill workers who, as he concludes, all too often lived and worked in harsh environments. Yet at the same time, Stuttard would like to think that his work engenders a sense of happiness and contentment in the eyes and minds of those whose lives revolved around these predominantly northern industrial heartlands. Picking up on that mantra, Stuttard insists that he tries to habitually portray the funnier side of life, especially when conveying the likeness of animals, which he typically illustratively interprets in a resolutely quirky form. Sheep, pigs, cats & birds all lend themselves perfectly to this pictorial rule of thumb, as do dogs, all of which figure prominently in Stuttard’s back catalogue of collective works. Stuttard’s ‘Feathered Friends, Four-Legged Friend’ and ‘Old Friends’ pieces are chief among which when discussing our relationships with animals, and to a sculpture they’re obviously all celebrating the closeness of one man and his pigeons, dog and cat in that quaint and altogether touching sculpted fashion which appeals to the old romantic found in us all.