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Rather ironically, many of the best paintings in English history have been painted by foreign artists.  Artists like Sargent, Whistler, Holbein and Van Dyck were all drawn to London to paint portraits of the rich and powerful.  England has always had an appetite for portraiture unlike anywhere else on earth. The same cannot be said for religious art. 

There are many reasons for this but we are left with an incredible visual record of almost all the most interesting characters in our cultural history.  English portraiture is about personality, idiosyncrasy, difference. It's a celebration of the individual. 

The way we see it, this is a good way of looking at the world: everybody is interesting, and everybody is beautiful in their own way.   

For all the technical challenges of painting portraits, the central mission remains to capture the ephemeral spirit of a human being, an individual who has hopes and dreams, strengths and weaknesses, someone who perhaps is caught in two minds. . .