Artist statement - Stella Tooth

Stella Tooth produces uplifting drawings & oil paintings of people, but also of flora & fauna, which capture the spirit of her subjects. Her work includes commissioned portraits that make the perfect gift.

Performers inspire her, both on the street and in venues, and she aims to capture the creative energy that comes from performing live. Going beyond performers' likeness, personality & mood, her art focuses on their movement, relationship with other performers & the audience. She is Resident Artist at the Half Moon Putney one of London's iconic music venues where her work is on show. 

Artist Stella Tooth in the BBC Newsroom where she worked as a senior news pr prior to retraining as a portraitist. Photo: Jeff Overs.

She has completed a series of portraits of some of the best known names in UK broadcast news including the BBC's John Humphrys & Kate Adie which has joined up her present and past careers as a print journalist and former senior BBC & Sky News PR. She is a founding member of the Lots Road Group of portrait artists who met when studying at The Heatherley School of Fine Art, & exhibit annually on a theme. Winner of the judges' prize at Egypt's first biennale (2013), she has exhibited at the Milan Expo, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters & National Open Art exhibitions (2015). 

She is represented in Brighton by Kellie Miller Arts for whom she has created a series of oil paintings featuring bathers which hold up a mirror to a love that binds us all - of being by the sea. Her open studios are in mid September as part of the Borough of Ealing Art Trail and sometimes mid October as part of Wandsworth Open House

She tutored drawing - fundamentals, methods and materials, portraits,  landscape and architecture - in the inspiring surrounds of the V&A, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain & The Courtauld for Sketchout until the Covid 19 epidemic. From January 2021 she will teach oil portraiture for beginners for Open Ealing.