Dorset artist, 96, to exhibit 70 years of self-portraits

A 96-year-old artist who is Dorset’s only member of the Royal Academy will exhibit a collection of his self portraits painted over 70 years.

Philip Sutton, from West Bay, is almost completely blind, but said he still found painting himself “absolutely marvellous”.

The Poole-based artist has designed stamps for the Post Office and posters for the London Underground and the proposed reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, among many other projects.

The collected self-portraits range from 10 to 120 cm sq and go on show at Sladers Yard Contemporary Art & Craft Gallery on Saturday.

Mr Sutton said he prefers to work with bright colours, which he said he finds playful.

“I’m working blind, I’ve lost 99% of my eyesight, I can see 1% out the corner of my right eye,” he said.

“I’m lucky, what I can’t see I make up, so I’m quite a good liar and a good falsifier.

“I’ve learnt to do things even if I can’t understand them and that’s a big advantage.”

His new exhibition of self portraits was collected over the last 70 years.

“It’s marvellous to paint yourself,” he said. “It’s partly because you know yourself,

“Also you change of course as you get older, everything changes your body, your lifestyle and your face changes.

“So it’s terribly interesting from a painter’s point of view.”

The youngest of four boys, Mr Sutton said: “I was brought up in London and left school at 14, the war was on people didn’t worry much about education.

“After that I was called up for the RAF, where I did three years including a year in Berlin.

“When I came out of the air force, the government brought in a scheme where everyone who had been in the war could go to college.”

During 1948 and 1953, he attended Slade College, in London to study art where he later became a teacher.

He said: “I was at a disadvantage, because I couldn’t spell, I couldn’t write properly, there were a lot of things I couldn’t do.

“I looked for something that didn’t require any of that, and that’s how I hit on the idea of being an artist.”

At the Slade School of Fine Art, Mr Sutton said he “prospered” and it is also where he met his wife who he was married to for 64 years.

His career he said has taken him to “so many places” including, London, Italy, France, Suffolk, Fiji, Falmouth, Pembrokeshire and Dorset.