Portal Painters
100 – 102 Sutherland Avenue, London W9 2QR
t: 020 7286 0940
Jess Wilder is the director of Portal Painters which represents some twenty artists. Some from Scotland such as John Byrne, Whyn Lewis,James McNaught, Heather Nevay and Peter Thomson all graduated from Glasgow Art School and have their own very singular visions. Though mostly from the UK, Portal represents Isabelle Rozot from Paris, and Aishan Yu from Sezchuan, China.
Portal Gallery opened in 1959, its founders Eric Lister and Lionel Levy had strong ideas about the kind of painting they wished to show and the gallery, located at that time in London’s Mayfair, quickly became known for self taught ‘naive’ painters. Over the years the gallery’s unpretentious attitude and its concentration on finding artists with immense technical skill has made Portal internationally famous. Superb craftsmanship combined with the extraordinary imaginations of its artists has made Portal a leading specialist in paintings which have a touch of magic realism and occasional flashes of humour and the surreal.
Portal Painters exhibit throughout the year at all the major London Art Fairs and at venues in the West End.
Beryl Cook (1926 – 2008 ) one of the gallery’s most celebrated artists and who only started painting in her forties showed with Portal for her entire career, with eighteen exhibitions. This former seaside landlady and her colourful world of large ladies, male strippers, drag acts, bars and night clubs has changed the way we look at the world, we see ‘Beryl Cook moments’ daily. Beryl Cook’s paintings are bought by collectors worldwide, and three of her major works were on show at Tate Britain in their 2010 exhibition ‘Rude Britannia : British Comic Art’.
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