Cara Study VIII, 2015
Jonathan Yeo (b. London, 18 December 1970) is one of the world’s leading figurative artists. He has painted and worked with iconic and celebrated figures including Sir David Attenborough, peace activist Malala Yousafzai, actors Dennis Hopper, Nicole Kidman and Idris Elba, artists Damien Hirst and Grayson Perry, supermodel and actor Cara Delevingne, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and has produced official commissions of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall. His work has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries around the world and has been the subject of several major mid-career retrospectives in the UK and internationally.
Entirely self-taught, Yeo rose to prominence as a figurative painter by the age of thirty following several major official commissions, such as that of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, at a time when painting generally, and portraiture in particular, had fallen out of fashion. His collage of George Bush in 2007, however, earned his reputation as someone known for both traditional and experimental portraiture. Along with his Collage Series, Yeo has explored more conceptual themes in his series of paintings looking at cosmetic surgery and increasingly his portraits are addressing wider concepts and themes within the paintings’ narrative.