Contemporary Art, Furniture & Craft Gallery · Licensed Café
In memory of the much-loved artist Hugh Dunford Wood (1949 – 2025), we present a selling selection of his colourful exuberant paintings, hand-coloured linocuts and witty collinos (collage linocuts).
Hugh Dunford Wood worked as an independent artist designer since student days at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art in the 1970s. He made a good living painting landscapes and portraits and ran a fashion business for 15 years hand-painting mens’ ties with a team of 24 artists under his direction. He designs crockery, jewellery, furnishing fabrics and wallpapers.
He was a member of The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Artist Member of the Royal Western Academy, Visiting Tutor at West Dean College, and was guest lecturer at Open University of the Arts. As a volunteer he ran art workshops through the London’s Passage night shelter, where he developed the Streetwise Artpack for homeless people. He ran art courses for detainees at Campsfield Removal Center, and at HMP Belmarsh and other prisons. He worked on a portrait project with prisoners in Philadelphia Correctional Facility, USA.
He was Artist in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company (where he developed an art therapy course with actors), and the Globe Theatre when it first opened in 2000, and The Museum of Bermuda Art in 2009 to mark the 400th anniversary of settlement. He was also Artist in Residence with the Church of England in London.
He exhibited widely in London and abroad with work in the collections of the V&A Museum, Christchurch & other Colleges at the University of Oxford, various County Councils, and private collections in Europe and America.
Hugh was always keen to demystify and disseminate the role of the arts, co-founding the first Open Studio Weeks in Britain in 1983, in Oxfordshire, and the Lyme Regis ArtsFest in 2003.
Hugh liked to encourage others to develop their creative potential, as he was fortunate in his life. He initiated a series of creative exercises while Artist in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and subsequently developed these with prison inmates, homeless men & women, asylum seekers and refugees.
In his later years, Hugh developed a series of workshops sharing specific skills such as wallpaper and Textile Prints and Sketchbook Keeping. He got enormous pleasure from passing on the skills he taught, encouraging confidence in others. he even got a medal from King Charles, who awarded him the President’s Award for Endangered Crafts in the House of Lords.
Hugh was hugely inspired by the natural world, the natural form, colour and a broad imagination. Outgoing, generous and ebullient, he will be greatly missed by his family and many friends.
