Portrait of Tom Scotcher in his Brighton studio 2025

Blue Shop Gallery presents
Tom Scotcher
‘Quarry of Interest’
8th - 25th July 2026
PV Wednesday 8th July 6-8pm 2026
72 Brixton Road, Oval SW9 6BH

Gallery opening hours:
Thu - Sat | 12pm - 5pm or by appointment

Tom Scotcher (b.1992) is a Lewes based artist who studied Visual Communication (BA Hons) at Central Saint Martins (2011-14) and thereafter at the Royal Drawing School (2016-17). In 2024, Tom was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant to produce a body of work for his solo exhibition, ‘Desire Paths’. He has been nominated for the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize (2019) and has undertaken two residencies at Dumfries House (2019, 2025). Recent selected group exhibitions include: Portrait Artist of the Year: The Exhibition (Compton Verney, 2022), Fair Ground, Art at Glyndebourne (Glynde, 2023, 2025); BUCOLIA II, Blue Shop Gallery (London, 2025) and London Art Fair, Blue Shop Gallery (London, 2026).

Introduction by Ocki, Blue Shop Gallery Director

BSG met Tom Scotcher in 2024 with a special gallery visit to the Bloomsbury Group’s hand painted chapel in Lewes. Scotcher participated in our infamous online group show ‘Works On Paper 7’ in 2025 and was part of Blue Shop Gallery’s summer group show ‘Bucolia II’ in July 2025 followed by participation in London Art Fair 2026 with Blue Shop Gallery.

Painted en plein air in the beautiful Sussex countryside, Scotcher captures the heat, light and beauty of the British summer. Expect thickly daubed paint, hot red suns hanging above the quarry, and landscapes transformed by the changing seasons.

Multi-panel works are pieced together like jigsaw puzzles, capturing the passage of time across a single view. Along river bends, between trees and across open fields, Scotcher paints directly from the landscape that inspires him, creating works that are both immediate and deeply rooted in place.

Exhibition text by Molly Martin

A portal of chalky light glimmers from the hazy mound in the distance. The shadows of dead giants live here. A quiet place with a long history of rocks and earth and silence before footsteps.

‘Quarry of Interest’ is the latest body of work from Lewes-based artist Tom Scotcher, who transforms the traditional landscape ‘en plein air’ into dynamic observations that capture the dramatic, sometimes threatening beauty of the landscape painting. Here, weather and light shifts with an enormity beyond comprehension, making the Sussex backdrop seem to move like the view from a window.

Movement is a central tenet in these works. Surfaces sway with thick tendrils of pigment - both wet and crumbling; mimicking the layers of sedimentary rock beneath the rolling hills that serve almost as a protagonist. Each dab and stroke of paint create a world in which heightened colour heralds the atmosphere of an overcast day or the moment before a summer storm. Here you stand beneath dark trees heavy with leaves or under spindly branches that sway and flicker in surreal light.

In nature, nothing stays still for long. The softest breeze can cut through the landscape and make a river ripple, altering the atmosphere in an instant. The work collects passing moments such as these and capture them quickly with the brush - sealing a fleeting moment on canvas before it flies.

In the name of capturing moments in the natural world (while also transporting materials into the open landscape by hand, on foot), the hand-made canvases start out as singular pieces, which can be folded or fitted together interchangeably with hinges or hooks. This practical solution informs the unusual shapes of each painting. Their peculiar angles are reminiscent of altar pieces and religious triptychs from the Medieval and Early Renaissance periods. Here, religious iconography becomes flora and fauna - positioning the subject matter as a setting for meditation in its own right.

The body of work is a patchwork of time periods, painted in stages across different points in time. As a consequence, the collection is unconstrained and includes pieces that have been strung together, a perfect metaphor for the memory of an experience.

In this world, time is non-linear: deep shadows jump around paradoxically, and the hour on the ground does not necessarily match the hour in the sky above. Upon each surface paint shifts, oscillates and blows in dusty lilacs and hazy greens against a backdrop of horizon orange and wisps of mint green cloud. The compositions combine keen observations and playful imagination. Any “true” likeness is dispelled, giving way to an expression of experience, of living itself, in a world where things grow, die and re-form.

hello@blueshopcottage.com for all catalogue requests

‘Quarry of Interest’ by Tom Scotcher

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