Jeremy Houghton

Dizzy Heights – Oil on Canvas – by Jeremy Houghton

Jeremy Houghton, (born 13 June 1974) is an an English painter. Using either oils or watercolour, Houghton focuses on capturing movement, producing dynamic representations of subjects including migrating birds, high-energy sports, rural life, equestrian pursuits and the military. Houghton's career to date has been structured by a mixture of studio-based work and documentary residencies: commissions that depict the life of communities as diverse as Olympic athletes and people working for the British royal family.

Although Houghton's focus ranges quite widely, his technique remains a constant. Regardless of subject, he always deploys areas of unpainted paper or canvas, using them to explore both the 'spaces between things' and the representational territory between figuration and abstraction.

Contents

Early life and career

Next steps

Recent work

Additional projects

Early life and career

Houghton was born and brought up in Broadway, Worcestershire, where he still lives and works today.^[1] (Sited in a famously beautiful area, Broadway is well known as the Cotswolds village where a number of leading cultural figures stayed and were inspired in the late 19th and early 20th century, including Oscar Wilde, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, William Morris and Edward Elgar.^[2])

After finishing school, Houghton studied at Exeter University, graduating with a degree in Law in 1996. Having continued to paint throughout his time as an undergraduate and, later, alongside a series of teaching jobs in schools, he went on to study fine art at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and then at Aix-Marseille University, France. Houghton left his studies in Marseille to take up a job as Head of Art at the International School of Cape Town. He combined teaching at the school with travel in Africa (including a residency at Rorke's Drift, the famous former mission station in KwaZulu-Natal) and continuing to paint and draw until 2005, when he returned to the UK with the intention of developing a full-time career as an artist.

Next steps

After leaving South Africa, Houghton won a series of commissions that cemented his reputation for producing striking representations of iconic subjects. The most significant of these was in 2009 when he was asked by the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms (the monarch's ceremonial guardsmen) to paint a portrait of the Queen presenting the officers with a new riband. In 2010, 'Think Pink', a solo exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery featuring oils of migrating flamingos, helped develop Houghton's reputation internationally, and in 2012 he was invited to show at Everard Read, Johannesburg^[3] and at the Visual Arts Gallery, Delhi.^[4]

Houghton's skill in depicting movement and light led to his selection as one of the twelve artists asked to help document the efforts of British athletes in the build up to the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games.^[5] In the same year, he received both the 'Best in Show' and 'Best Sporting Picture' award from the Society of Equestrian Artists.^[6]

Recent work

More recently, Houghton has consolidated his reputation as an imaginative residency artist with a series of high-profile commissions. In 2013 he was asked to capture the life of Highgrove House,^[7] the royal residence of the Prince of Wales in Gloucestershire, UK. Houghton chose to focus here on the estate's working farm and gardens, which support the Prince's interest in the preservation of both traditional agricultural techniques and indigenous plant and animal species. The following year, Houghton was invited to complete a similar project at Windsor Castle^[8] for the Queen, where he concentrated on documenting the everyday life of the working stables that sit at the heart of the castle complex.

Since 2015, Houghton has completed a further residency at Goodwood,^[9] the celebrated estate owned by British aristocrat and motoring enthusiast the Earl of March, and started work on another for Land Rover BAR^[10] (2016–), documenting Sir Ben Ainslie's attempt to win the America's Cup with a state-of-the-art British-built catamaran. Houghton has also been appointed resident artist for the 2017 Wimbledon tennis championships.

Alongside these residency projects, Houghton continues to produce standalone pieces of work in his Broadway studio that consistently focus on one of a handful of themes: migrating birds, rural life, sport and the military. Based on reference photographs he has taken, these paintings all demonstrate an interest in capturing light and movement. In 2014, a number of these works featured alongside selected residency images in a ten-year retrospective of Houghton's work staged by the Broadway Museum & Art Gallery,^[11] a space that works in partnership with the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Additional projects

Alongside his residencies and studio work, Houghton has been working on the construction of a large-scale rural art installation titled Glassground.^[12] Informed by work done for his MA by Research in Fine Art (University of Gloucestershire; awarded 2017), this project has turned the floor of a derelict agricultural greenhouse into a water-filled pool. The idea is that the water helps transform the building into an environment that both confuses and extends the viewer's response to light, reflection and liminal space.

Houghton is also the founder and director of a charity, Heart Felt Tips.^[13] Set up in XXXX, this initiative organises for children who are suffering economic hardship to receive 'art packs' via food banks and other frontline services. These pencil cases, packed with pens and other art supplies, also feature Tip Sheets: a list of ideas to stimulate imaginative thinking and (for older children) advice on careers and life planning.

References

1. (23 March 2011) "My Cotswold Life: Jeremy Houghton". Cotswold Life. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

2. "Broadway Tourist Information & Travel Guide". Cotswold.Info website. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

3. "Everard Read: Jeremy Houghton". Everard Read website. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

4. Tripathi, Shailaja (13 December 2012). "Flight of light". The Hindu. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

5. (31 March 2012) "London 2012: Olympic artists exhibit at Oxford gallery". BBC website. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

6. "Horse in art 2012 prizewinners". Society of Equestrian Artists website. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

7. Armytage, Marcus (13 October 2014). "Artist Jeremy Houghton has revealed what lies behind closed doors at Windsor". The Telegraph. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

8. Armytage, Marcus (13 October 2014). "Artist Jeremy Houghton has revealed what lies behind closed doors at Windsor". The Telegraph. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

9. (26 June 2016) "A year in the life of Goodwood's Artist in Residence". Goodwood website. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

10. (2 December 2015) "Time to Paint – Land Rover BAR announce Artist-in-Residence". Land Rover BAR website. Retrieved 24 March 2017.

11. "10 Year Retrospective". Impress Publishing website. Retrieved 27 March 2014.

12. "Glassground. Rural art installation". Glassground website. Retrieved 27 March 2017.

13. Heart Felt Tips website. Retrieved 27 March 2017.

 External Links

Jeremy Houghton's www.jeremyhoughton.co.uk

Ÿ Forward by Professor Christopher Brown (Director of the Ashmolean) in the catalogue to Houghton's 10-year retrospective at Broadway Museum & Art Gallery

Ÿ Introduction by Dr. Jim Brook in the catalogue to Houghton's 10-year retrospective at Broadway Museum & Art Gallery

Ÿ Profile of Jeremy Houghton published in Cloud magazine, February 2017