Lorna Wadsworth

Lorna May Wadsworth is a figurative painter, born in Sheffield and based in East London. She studied BA (Hons) Illustration at Falmouth College of Art before undertaking The Drawing Year. She persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Rt. Hon. David Blunkett to sit for her the year she graduated, when she was also Artist in Residence at the Labour Party Conference (2003). Her debut show in London was entitled Beautiful Boys, and a recurring theme in her work is male beauty from a feminine perspective, inverting the established art historical paradigm of a male creator and passive female muse. In 2010 Wadsworth unveiled a modern interpretation of The Last Supper, a 12 foot altarpiece featuring a black Christ flanked by young male models, at St-Martin-in-the-Fields, before it was installed permanently in St George's Church, Nailsworth. She prefers to work un-commissioned so her work is not mediated by a commissioning body, gleaning access to individuals on her own initiative. Her 6 foot portrait of Baroness Thatcher was recently sold by international art dealer Philip Mould OBE for a six figure sum. Mould has described the painting, which Wadsworth painted from five live sittings with Lady Thatcher at her home in 2007, as "arguably the boldest formal life portrait of a prime minister ever painted in Britain".