On Thursday 2nd October, renowned painter, James Hartdyke, visited the Art Department to share his artistic journey with our GCSE and A Level pupils.
A graduate in Architecture from the Royal College of Art, James has enjoyed a remarkable career, painting commissions for Highgrove, accompanying HRH The King on royal tours, and documenting military operations with the SAS in Afghanistan.
Head of Art, Mr Field, reflected on the visit: “James spoke about the cross-over with art and the military having travelled with the SAS to document conflicts in Afghanistan as well as working as artist in residence for MI6 to record the daily life of the British intelligence service over the course of a year.”
“In recent years James has climbed Mount Everest, Mont Blanc as well as K2 to paint at the summits and he spoke of his love of the landscape which all started with a visit with his mum at a very young age to the V&A Museum in London where he saw a beautiful oil study by the British painter John Constable. This ignited his passion and love of painting and he has gone on to have a distinguished and incredibly exciting and varied artistic career. James spoke of the importance of finding your purpose in life and pursuing what you enjoy in life.”
“He also referred to the challenges that he has faced, not least, working out the equipment and materials required to paint at altitude and in extreme conditions and how one project has led onto others, from working with MI6 to then becoming the official artist to produce the artwork to celebrate 50 years of James Bond.”
“James continued to provide a fascinating insight into his creative journey at the Sixth Form Dinner, which enabled pupils to ask questions and really get to understand the mindset of what it is like to be working at the highest level (no pun intended) in your chosen field and the sacrifices that James has made to go on to achieve great success.”
“James’ painting of Queen Camilla has just been part of The King’s Tour Artist Collection exhibition at Buckingham Palace. It was a great honour to meet the artist, welcome him to Kingham Hill and to spend a day with him in the Art Department. I hope that the pupils will remember this experience and the advice that James offered for many years to come and use what they have learnt to follow and find their purpose in life.”