Gary Hume

Gary Stewart Hume (born 1962 in Tenterden, Kent) is a British painter linked to the Young British Artists, who came to prominence in the early 1990s. He graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 1988 and has been a Royal Academician since 2001.

His early reputation rests on his door paintings, life-size representations of hospital doors. They were praised by critics, shown in Germany and the United States, and drew the attention of collector Charles Saatchi, whose collection was displayed in Sensation in 1997. In the mid-1990s he left doors behind and began working in gloss household paint on aluminium panels, depicting celebrities such as DJ Tony Blackburn and animals. His forms and colours are deliberately simplified: people are reduced to two or three colours, as in Snowman (1996), made in three shades of red. He first favoured bright colours and later turned to more muted tones.

In 1999 he represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale with the Water series, line drawings of women rendered on aluminium. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1996, but lost to Douglas Gordon.

His work continues to be exhibited and collected, and his use of gloss paint on aluminium and his treatment of everyday imagery make him a notable figure in late twentieth-century British art.