Tom Worsfold (b. 1990, Cambridge) is an artist and Fine Art tutor based in London. He studied at the Royal Academy Schools and the Slade School of Fine Art and has exhibited widely across the UK and internationally, including: Castor Projects, Carlos/Ishikawa, Block 336, MAMOTH, Recent Activity, Mackintosh Lane, Space K, Spike Island and more.
Worsfold embraces painting’s ability to accommodate disparate forms, styles and references – seeing the medium as a model for interdisciplinary thinking and cultural dialogue. More than this, he sees painting as a means of producing complexity, nuance and ambiguity.
Worsfold makes pictures about everyday life. Painting is used as a medium for personal, social and philosophical investigation. Often intensely laboured, the works are made flat, like giant watercolours. Attending to patches of canvas bit by bit results in images built from accumulated parts. Figures exist as collections of things and surfaces; specific moods are evoked by the hybrid of associations triggered by symbolic languages. The works probe the embodied experience of daily life – internal states of mind, the gaps between meaning, and ideas that escape verbalisation.
Recent work has explored the body as a site, mapping memories, fantasies and anxieties onto the figure. These works have drawn upon the ways media narratives render the body as a project to be continually worked on. Worsfold is interested in recognisable graphic visual languages like cartoons and diagrams, using these as codes for personal themes.
Main image:
Fallen, 2020, acrylic on flax, 60 x 84 cm
Image gallery:
Garden, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 120 cm
Raspberry, 2020, acrylic on flax, 75 x 100 cm
Sink, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 120 cm
Tongue, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 120 cm
Underground, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 140 cm