The Lives Of The Artists

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) was a French painter, sculptor, and writer who rejected traditional ideas of beauty and believed real creativity came from ordinary people rather than trained artists. After working in his family’s wine business for many years, he returned to art in his forties and developed a rough, raw style inspired by children’s drawings, graffiti, and the work of psychiatric patients...

Sylvie Barbier is a passionate ritual artist part of the Second Renaissance art collective, magazine and co-founder of Life Itself organisation. As a storied performance artist her works touch on themes around birth and death, impermanence, mysticism and womanhood. They synthesizes easter and western philosophies and aesthetics.

Born in 1909 in Dublin, rejected by his father, drifting through Berlin and Paris as a young man, Francis Bacon transformed personal chaos into some of the most powerful paintings of the twentieth century. Inspired by Pablo Picasso, he created haunting images of popes, lovers, and screaming figures that captured the violence, loneliness, and intensity of modern life. His rise to fame brought wealt...

Jason Greene A.K.A. Freckle (born February 2, 1988) is an American actor and internet personality famously known by the moniker "Freckle." He rose to prominence for originating the breakout, genderfluid character Freckle in the cult-favorite YouTube web series The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo (2016). Greene has built a recognizable career in independent film and digital series. In addition...

Francisco Goya painted the Black Paintings late in his life after years of illness, deafness, war, political violence and personal isolation had left him deeply bitter and disturbed. Between 1819 and 1823, while living in a house outside Madrid called the Quinta del Sordo, he covered the walls with dark, terrifying images filled with madness, witches, violence and despair. Spain had been devastate...

Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch painter born around 1450 in the town of ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. Very little is known about his private life, but he became famous for creating strange, detailed paintings filled with demons, sinners, religious visions and bizarre fantasy creatures unlike anything seen before in European art. Working during the late Middle Ages, Bosch used dark humour and s...

Meet Johno Verity, who calls himself a practical insomniac with a pink hat that delves into London history on his bike. Riding around at the break of dawn discussing everything from Boudicca to the Gin craze and how to be more present in your own life. In this podcast we also discuss his own creative life, his journey in social media, as well as his father's artistic life. Simon Verity who was a h...

Susie Hodge is a bestselling author who has written over 160 books on art, art history, history and artistic techniques. Susie's other activities include lectures, talks and practical workshops, plus television and radio talks and documentaries about art.

This is the story of Caravaggio’s crazy life , he lived fast and violently, rising in Rome as a brilliant but volatile painter whose raw realism shocked the art world. In 1606 he killed Ranuccio Tomassoni, during a dispute and was forced to flee Rome with a death sentence over his head. He moved through Naples and then to Malta, where he briefly found favour with the Knights of St John before fall...

Jacopo Robusti 1518-1594, best known as Tintoretto was an Italian Renaissance painter from Venice. His contemporaries both admired and criticised the speed with which he painted and the unprecedented boldness of his brushwork. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed il Furioso (Italian for 'the Furious'). His work is characterised by muscular figures, dramatic gestures and bold use of...

Joseph Bucklow is a painter originally from Yorkshire who now lives and works in London. He studied History (BA) at the University of Glasgow before completing an MA in Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School in Kennington in 2019. He currently works full-time as an artist based in Notting Hill.   Drawing on imagination, memory, and photography as sources of inspiration, Bucklow’s paint...

Geordie Greig, is an English journalist. He has been the editor-in-chief of The Independent since January 2023, and was the editor of the Daily Mail from 2018 to 2021 and the Mail on Sunday from 2012 to 2018. He was taken to a Freud exhibition as a teenager and became fascinated by the man. As a student journalist he tried repeatedly to get the notoriously private and infamously confrontational Fr...

Nick Cox is a specialist dealer in portraiture from the 17th century to the 20th century. He became very well known through his original social media content and travels extensively to source his ever changing stock, which includes quality oil paintings, drawings and mezzotints from both British and European artists.

A conversation with the world's greatest art forger. David Henty is a former master forger. Acclaimed as 'the brushstroke alchemist,' his works are renowned for the accuracy and authenticity with which he paints perfect copies of original works by master painters. Henty copies works by Caravaggio, Pablo Picasso, Amadeo Modigliani, Vincent Van Gogh, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others. Many of Henty's...

L.S. Lowry was an English artist. His drawings and paintings mainly depict Pendlebury, Lancashire (where he lived and worked for more than 40 years as well as Salford and its vicinity. Lowry painted scenes of life in the industrial districts of North West England in the mid-20th century. He developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figu...

Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence around 1445 and rose to prominence under the patronage of the powerful Medici family , especially Lorenzo de’ Medici . In their cultured circle he painted refined mythological works like Primnavera and The Birth of Venus, images that defined the elegance of the Florentine Renaissance. But after Lorenzo’s death in 1492, Florence changed. The fiery preacher Gir...

Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence around 1445 and rose to prominence under the patronage of the powerful Medici family , especially Lorenzo de’ Medici . In their cultured circle he painted refined mythological works like Primavera and The Birth of Venus, images that defined the elegance of the Florentine Renaissance. But after Lorenzo’s death in 1492, Florence changed. The fiery preacher Giro...

Richard Kitson is a portrait and figurative artist based in South Yorkshire. His work has been featured in prestigious exhibitions, including the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize, Figurative Art Now, and the Cork Street Open. Kitson has exhibited across the UK and in...

From ancient Greece to Picasso ~ in this talk I present a grand overview of the history and origins of oil painting in the Low Countries, the regions in Europe that the technique really took hold, all the way through to the British landscape artists impact and ultimate influence of French Impressionism to Picasso and the birth of modern art. Special thanks to The Chapel in Bruton for putting on su...

Armando Cabba is a Paris-based Canadian artist whose work bridges portraiture and abstraction, known especially for richly coloured, figurative paintings that explore the emotional and psychological presence of his subjects with close attention to detail and nuance. Born in Montreal, he studied fine art at Concordia University and briefly at the Florence Academy of Art before working independently...

John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Belle Époque and Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolours, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. In this episode of 'The Lives Of The Artists' podcast I go live with eminent art historian Paola Voj...

Dr Ben Street is an art historian and educator based in London. He received his PhD in 2024 from the University of East Anglia. His research is on Philip Guston’s late paintings and their engagement with historical Italian art. Ben is also the author of numerous books including How to Enjoy Art: A Guide for Everyone (Yale, 2021), the award-winning children’s book How to Be an Art Rebel (Thames &am...

The Tate Britain exhibition 'Turner & Constable: Rivals and Originals' offers a landmark overview of Britain's two greatest landscape painters, exploring their parallel careers, contrasting personalities, and intense rivalry through over 170 works, marking their 250th birth anniversaries (Turner in 2025, Constable in 2026). The exhibition showcases masterpieces and rarely seen personal items,...

James Hayes is an acclaimed portrait painter who lives and works in St Paul’s Studios on Talgarth Road in London which are a distinctive row of late-Victorian Arts & Crafts-style live-work houses built in 1891 by architect Frederick Wheeler with huge north-facing windows to give painters and other artists superb natural light, and they quickly became a celebrated enclave for creative figures i...

John Hall is a passionate arts educator, lecturer and guide, based in London and Italy. Director of the John Hall Venice Course, tour leader for Kirker Holidays and of independent tours in Italy. Designer and host of a series of art talks and events for the Soho House group of private member's clubs.