Tom Scotcher

As we gear up for our very first Drink and Draw Club, we’re thrilled to have artist Tom Scotcher at the helm, guiding us through an evening of creativity, conversation, and inspiration. A graduate of the Royal Drawing School, Tom’s work has been showcased at Piano Nobile Gallery as part of the prestigious Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize, and you might have spotted him on Sky Arts: Portrait Artist of the Year. In 2024, his talent earned him the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, a major honor for emerging figurative artists.

With teaching experience at Camden Arts Centre, Brighton MET, and City & Guilds of London Art School, Tom brings both passion and expertise to the table. We caught up with him ahead of the session to talk art, inspiration, and what to expect from the Drink and Draw experience!.

Tom Scotcher in his studio space, Brighton.

Much of your work explores the contrast between open fields and dense woodland. How do these landscapes shape your creative approach, and what draws you to their duality?

 Tom - These two motifs represent two aspects of the British landscape, the familiar terrain of grazed farmland and the beguiling mystery of the woodland.

 The paintings are the culmination of many short meanderings out into the countryside near my home where I make quick sketches, notes and sound recordings to use later in the studio. I often carry my easel, paints and canvases and work directly from life. While outdoors I am fully present and responsive to my surroundings. Subsequently, studio work allows me to move beyond the immediacy of direct observation, utilising memory to create images faithful to my experience.

You emphasise working directly from observation outdoors. How does the physical experience of being immersed in the landscape influence your mark-making and artistic decisions?

  Tom - Over time the space opens up around me and reveals little nuances. I start to notice things within its’ thickets and hedgerows that I am observing and experiencing there and then at the moment. I get very excited about what my eyes are seeing, and I begin putting marks down very quickly. Often my eyes are wondering around so fast that it is difficult for my hands to keep up. My hands almost shake with excitement at trying to extract these glances and put them down in colour.

 The themes of folklore and ancient beliefs run through your work. How do you see these narratives informing your paintings, and what role does storytelling play in your practice?

 Tom -There is a temptation to over romanticise the countryside as a lost eden, wild and overgrown. I think this notion is quite dangerous as it removes us from the reality of life in the countryside. It seems to be a knock-on effect from a Victorian era approach to observing the landscape through an urban lens. The reality of people who live on the land is rarely ever bucolic.

 I am interested how various communities over time have used stories as a way to understand the landscape. These stories mutate, warp and are elaborated upon over time. They are difficult to be dissected and understood, but leave room for doubt and uncertainty. I like to think my paintings do this too.

 There are serendipitous fragments from these stories that culminate in my mind while I’m outdoors working which don’t always permeate onto the canvas, but I like to use them to build a sense of place in my memory. For instance, there is a story (I can’t remember which one) about screaming witches in a deep thicket that came to my mind while I was painting in a hazel copse. The wind was fierce and I could hear something that resembled the screams until I realised it was the branches of the canopy rubbing together.

4. You completed your Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal Drawing School. How has your education there shaped your approach to painting and printmaking?

  Tom - The Royal Drawing School was a fantastic opportunity for so many reasons. I was lucky to work alongside a lot of very talented artists in a nurturing and encouraging atmosphere. The guidance and advice from the tutors was invaluable. There was an element of play that I was so nourishing. I think they embed this in all the students there, which is why so many alumni are still practicing artists, artists who are continually questioning their motives and processes.

You talk about reconnecting people with nature through your paintings. What do you hope we take away from your work in terms of our own relationship with the land?

  Tom - I hope my paintings mimic the experience of being in nature, dwarfed by the immensity and grandeur of the space and I hope it encourages people to enjoy the quite moments when one is alone in nature.

You are a trained carpenter / cabinet maker, -we are excited that you’ll be bringing some of your more conceptual pieces to draw from at Weald Contemporary’s Drink and Draw Session in Chichester on 5th March. Can you talk a bit about these pieces and some of the other sculptural projects you have carried out using your these skills?

 Tom - These were made in collaboration with my wife Kate. For our hand-fast ceremony we wanted to liven up the stage of the village hall and transform it into an immersive ceremonial outdoor arena. I built two privacy screens comprised of three panels which we each painted the landscape of our ancestors (Austrian mountains for me and the undulating hills of Oxfordshire for Kate).

We originally wanted the ceremony to be outdoors so I painted a backdrop curtain of the Sussex landscape, where we live now. We also looked into having our ceremony at the Rollright Stones in Chipping Norton as the hand-fast ceremony is a pre-Christian tradition, so we built a series of standing stones on the stage to manifest this. This has been the greatest collaborative and immersive artwork Kate and I have made to date!