Stuart Pearson Wright

Stuart was born in 1975 in Northampton, and currently lives and works in Suffolk, England. He attended art school at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, and it was there he began his career in portraiture. From the beginning of his arts education he was a skilled painter winning a travel award from the National Portrait Gallery allowing him to travel and advance his skills in portraiture. This resulted in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery entitled From Eastbourne to Edinburgh: A Painter’s Odyssey. He has continued to create highly celebrated portraiture. This includes a portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh commissioned by the Royal Society of Arts who would later refuse the work for its unconventional depiction. Wright’s portraits have continued in this unconventional manner as he uses hyper-realistic and detailed techniques that can be compared to famous 18th century English portraiture, but at the same time depicts humans in theatrical and illustrative ways. His work often leaves a dramatic and at times a melancholy feeling within the paintings. He has continued to be widely celebrated and now is considered to be an internationally renowned portraitist. 

Stuart Pearson Wright received his Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from the Slade school of Fine Art. After graduation he participated in a post graduate level course at the University College London called the Drawing Year (1999). After this he attended the Royal Drawing School in London (2003). Wright has been a part of many important exhibitions and has works in very prominent permanent collections including the National Portrait Gallery in London, the British Museum in London, and the Royal Collection. His recent solo exhibitions include a show entitled Roadkill at the Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong, (2025-2026); an exhibition called Halfboy which showed at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales (2019), Snape Maltings in Suffolk (2019), and Heong Gallery in Cambridge (2018); He also had a Drawing Retrospective at Enitharmon Editions in London (2018). Wright was also in a group show entitled Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust which showed at The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace in London (2022) as well as at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh (2022).