“I write stories
in paint.”

Harriet has had a deep fascination with people’s faces and therefore portraits for as long as she can remember. It is more than just the psychology of someone that can be captured and translated through a portrait for Harriet; it is the story. It is the challenge of trying to unearth the essence of someone through subtle nods to their character and the use of symbolism throughout the painting. As she says “I write my story in paint and then when other people see it they can create their own.”

B.1990. Harriet has been painting oil portraits for over a decade. She trained for almost 4 years in traditional portraiture at Charles Cecil Studios, in Florence.
After finishing art school, Harriet has worked as a commissioned portrait artist from her London Studio. Her work has been exhibited in many prestigious competitions such as the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize, and is owned in private collections throughout the UK and Europe, including the British Royal Collection.

This intense and formal training laid the foundations from which Harriet found her own contemporary style of portraiture, one now honed through all her years of experience. While in dialogue with the traditional Masters of portraiture Harriet’s work is a uniquely timeless, anchored firmly in the present by a unique eye for interesting compositions and a bold approach to both subject and colour.
Harriet loves to find the space in a painting to let her subjects breathe, and her broadly muted palette is often sharpened with pops of vibrant colour that are powerfully expressive of individual personality or place. She has a particular love of painting children, of capturing an unfiltered portrait of character found in the innocent moments of childhood.