Fine Art Commissions – Live Zoom Events During Lockdown with Nicky Philipps and Nick Bashall

In a year that has felt less than normal owing to the pandemic, many people have devoted a larger amount of time to creativity and the arts. Firstly, as a colourful outlet through lockdown and secondly as a more serene means of distraction from the grittier goings on echoing across the news.

Today at 4pm, Fine Art Commissions, Europe’s leading portrait agency, launch the first in a series of complimentary Zooms starring two of their leading artists, Nick Bashall and Nicky Philipps. In today’s inaugural offering, the two artists will explore the peaks of their careers to date, but later sessions (details below) will be dedicated to the practice of their art with live streamed masterclasses executed at first, in charcoal, and then in oil.

Courtesy of Nick Bashall

It’s difficult to overemphasise what a coup this is – for the art-minded, Bashall and Philipps need no introduction, but for others, let me explain. Nick Bashall’s subjects read like the pages of Who’s Who, Her Royal Highness Princess Anne to the former head of the British Army, Sir Michael Jackson. Bashall, who paints to such an impressive likeness, trained under the Spanish maestro Joaquin Torrents Llado in Majorca for five years, before embarking on his artistic career wholesale. As an artist, he moves between more formal studio sittings to cameos as a performing painter at the likes of Glastonbury.

Courtesy of Nicky Philipps

Nicky Philipps is another master craftsman. Her works span the walls of London’s prestigious National Gallery and form a part of the Royal Collection. Her painting of Her Majesty the Queen, commissioned by the Royal Mail (for the first class stamp), is a testament to her abilities. She’s also wonderfully down-to-earth, less high and mighty and more an active painter and listener. She says, enthusiastically: ‘The possibilities are so huge when somebody comes into the studio if somebody’s got some little quirk or characteristic – it’s fun to exploit it.’ Adding: ‘Just composing something is very exciting’.

There are few finer times to learn about the art behind painting – and few better people to learn from. Sam Parker Bowles, Fine Art Commission’s associate director, encourages anyone and everyone to come and go as they please to these Zoom courses put on exclusively during this second lockdown. He tells Tatler, ‘It’s always amazing what one can learn from the mouth of an artist or from just a flick of their paintbrush.’

For more information about the classes and links to the various Zooms, visit fineartcommissions.com
Zooms will take place weekly on Tuesdays at the following times: 10 November at 4pm, 17 November at 3pm, 24 November at 4pm and 1 December at 3pm