Amy Dury

Expert tutor

Amy studied BA Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art (1993-97) and an MA Fine Art at University of Brighton (2000-02). She works in oil and acrylic paint alongside drawing and mixed media.

Recent notable events include appearing on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2021, being accepted for the 2021 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, and also in 2021conducting a live stream portrait painting session for Tate Instagram.

In 2022/23 Amy was chosen to respond to Edvard Munch print for Society of Scottish Artists Annual Show and has been a regular guest on Painting Insights and John Daltons art podcast in 2023.

Amy exhibited with both the Royal Institute of Watercolourt Painters and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In 2024 Amy exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and was included in the Case Art Prize Shortlist.

Amy has been filming for Artist of the Year and will appear teaching Masterclasses on Portrait Painting.

As well as painting portraits directly from the sitter, Amy’s practice is guided by her background as printmaker which informs her use of layers and structure, often extracting figures from photographs or films from the pre-digital age. This can be from family archives. Exploring the role people have in society - the hierarchies and dynamics of power.

Always painting with a strong idea of colour, using both acrylic and oils, sometimes charcoal and mixed media, or pencil drawings, Amy engages in the act of remembering and nostalgic mis-remembering of these recent pasts with the film and photos becoming a vehicle for constructing stories about ourselves. Figures are often rewritten or falling from clear view. Digital processes are used to reconstruct the scenes and suggest colour themes. Our history instructs, seduces and tethers us, and Amy uses paint to examine these emotive memories which reflect current themes and tensions in contemporary life.