David Shutt
The single most formative influence on David Shutt's life was visiting L S Lowry at his house, which was near his family home, a number of times around 1960 as a school boy. The large “Ebbw Vale” painting was in progress on the main easel in his front room. It was Lowry who first made David Shutt aware that one could be an artist and encouraged him to bring some of his paintings to his house and talked to him about them.
Born in West Kirby, The Wirral, in 1945, David Shutt followed Lowry's advice and applied to do the Manchester Foundation Course (1964) and was taught by Adrian Henri who was his tutor. Henri was very supportive but Shutt was particularly predisposed by Lowry to respond to the aesthetics of the Euston Road School whose ex-teachers and pupils he met as an undergraduate at Leeds University (1968) in Quentin Bell and Lawrence Gowing and as a post-graduate in William Coldstream and Euan Uglow at the Slade (1979). It was there Shutt also met Patrick George and Patrick Symons, both substantial influences on his work. The most particular and focussed teaching he experienced however was from Norman Norris.
After leaving the Slade, Shutt became a visiting tutor at a number of London art schools but continued to work from the figure in a studio made available for ten years at the then London College of Printing at the Elephant and Castle. Euan Uglow used to call in on his way to the Slade every week and look at Shutt's current painting.
It was from Patrick Symons and his extraordinarily personal approach to art education that Shutt was able to apply to his own work and teaching, which led to him becoming Head of the Art and Design Department at Canterbury Christ Church University. The need to develop his own work and continuing professional practice as an artist were absolutely homogeneously welded together: the one informed the other which eventually led to him resigning in order to devote all his time to painting.
Shutt moved to Greece and lived there for ten years, devoting himself fully to his practice. He has recently spent increasingly more time in the UK, in Cornwall and Kent.
Exhibitions
2017 Lands of Goddess and Myth, Felix & Spear, London (e-catalogue)
2018 Recent Paintings: Trees, Felix & Spear, London (e-catalogue)
2021 Old And New Places: David Shutt Paintings, Felix & Spear, London (e-catalogue)
