FINALIST Season 11 of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2026.

Tom Winter is an established artist specialising in oil painting, graphite, and ink, working primarily from his studio at Hengistbury Head, Dorset. For almost thirty years he has worked as a freelance painter, producing portraits, landscapes, figures, and still lifes. The unifying theme throughout his work is the personality of people and place, with a particular focus on the transformative effects of light. A lifelong admirer of Caravaggio, Tom is deeply influenced by chiaroscuro and the balance between pattern and illumination.

His practice encompasses oil paintings on board, prints including linocuts and intaglio etchings, graphite sketches, and pen-and-ink drawings, alongside sculpted clay head studies. While rooted in direct observation, his paintings and prints are often developed from a range of sources such as sketchbook drawings, photographs, and more recently, iPad sketches.

Tom completed a two-year foundation course at Shelley Art College in Bournemouth before graduating from the Slade School of Art in 1997 with a degree in Fine Art Painting and a subsidiary subject in Anatomy, where he was taught in part by Euan Uglow. Upon graduation, he was selected as a student recipient of the Sunday Times Singer/Freelander Prize.

His work has been exhibited widely across the UK, including the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition (2010), a solo exhibition A Sense of Place at the Bishop’s Palace, Wells Cathedral (2015), and a joint exhibition at Battersea Contemporary Arts Fair with Ben Winter (2006). Each year he shows work at Sir Harold Hillier’s Gallery, Romsey, alongside Ben and their mother, Sally.

His work is held in private collections including Railtrack, Price Waterhouse Coopers, and Sally and Ronnie Wood.

Alongside his studio practice, Tom has an extensive teaching career, tutoring in life drawing, portraiture, and still life. He is currently a visiting lecturer at Coda Music and Arts Trust Arts University Bournemouth and Bournemouth University’s National Centre for Computer Animation.

Website: www.tomwinterart.co.uk

Instagram: @tomwinterart

Facebook: Tom Winter Art