Portal Painters has been exhibiting finely detailed figurative paintings by a unique group of artists for over fifty years. Their paintings are sometimes humorous, often surreal and always beautifully executed. The artists combine technical skill with imagination and though each painter has their own style and subject matter together under the Portal banner they form a coherent ‘school’ of painters. The work of Portal Painters has resolutely remained outside the fads and fashions of the art world.

Portal Painters exhibits the work of some 25 artists, adding new painters from time to time. With the exception of Isabelle Rozot, who is from Paris, the other artists are UK based, several of them are Scottish : John Byrne, James McNaught, Whyn Lewis and Heather Nevay all studied at Glasgow School of Art, which has produced so many of Scotland’s finest painters.

Portal started exhibiting paintings and objects by Kit Williams in the late 1960’s. He subsequently became famous worldwide after his book of paintings ‘Masquerade’ (1979) was published - each painting containing a clue to a buried treasure of a golden hare set with jewels, this remained buried for two years until it was finally found.

Beryl Cook (1926 – 2008) was one of Portal’s most celebrated artists. She started painting in her forties and exhibited with Portal for her entire career, with eighteen exhibitions. This former seaside landlady with her colourful world of large ladies, male strippers, drag acts, bars and night clubs changed the way we look at the world – so we see ‘Beryl Cook moments’ daily. Cook’s paintings are in collections all over the world, including those of Jackie Collins and Yoko Ono. Three of Beryl Cook’s most important works were on show at Tate Britain in 2010 in their exhibition ‘Rude Britannia : British Comic Art’.

Portal celebrated its fiftieth birthday in 2009 with ‘A Singular Vision’ (published by Prestel.) It is a fascinating and comprehensive survey of Portal Painters and their extraordinary talents.

Portal Painters started life as Portal Gallery in 1959 in London’s Mayfair, at that time the gallery became well known for exhibiting the work of self-taught (naïve) painters of whom James Lloyd was the best known. Over the years the style of painting shown by Portal has changed with most of the artists having attended art schools yet subsequently developing their particular and often idiosyncratic style of painting and subject matter.

Jess Wilder joined the gallery after studying for a degree in Art History at The University of East Anglia. She spent a year in Paris working at the Galerie de Seine and then ran the Portal Gallery for many years and continues with Portal Painters exhibiting at all the major London Art Fairs :The London Art Fair at the Business Design Centre, Islington in January. The AAF Battersea in March, Lapada Art and Antiques Fair in Berkeley Square in September and The 20/21 British Art Fair at the Mall Galleries in September.