Stella Tooth
Stella is an award-winning, commissionable portrait artist based in Northfields who has undertaken many private commissions. She has depicted well-known sitters from the BBC’s Kate Adie to George Alagiah and also undertakes commissions for the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. She collaborates with you to celebrate your stories and create meaningful portraits that enliven your walls. Uniquely, as an experienced journalist, she can also tell your stories in words.
Stella also takes inspiration from the capital's venue - and street – entertainers and has exhibited both at home and abroad. Using her skills in drawing, mixed media and oils, honed at The Heatherley School of Fine Art in Chelsea, she captures the excitement of performing live.
As Resident Artist of the Half Moon Putney, her portraits of musicians as diverse as Nick Mason and Ralph McTell are this year helping to celebrate the legendary rock venue’s 60th anniversary. New this year, she’s delighted to have been invited to portray jazz musicians at sister pub, the Bull’s Head, Barnes, which opened in 1959 at the same time as Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club and became known as the "suburban Ronnie Scott's".
As you might expect with a home studio just 20 minutes’ walk from both the site of The Ealing Club “the cradle of British rock“ and the birthplace of Marshall Amplification in Hanwell, Stella also portrays a number of Ealing musicians, including Robert Hokum, founder of The Ealing Blues Festival.
In the last couple of years, Stella has found inspiration in photographs of 1980s music icons like Freddie Mercury and Tina Turner, taken on 35mm film by Ealing-based Getty photographer Solomon N'Jie. Using her newly acquired digital painting skills, she answers the question “What is art’s role in the age of photography?”, in a highly collectable, series of record album-sized digital paintings.
Tenderlonius Cawthorne
Andy Fairweather
George Harrison