Director and Co-Founder, The Essential School of Painting
Andrew holds a deeply held belief in the power of art to transform lives and society, and a particular interest in new models for art education beyond school, championing the twin ideals of excellence and affordability in a sector under real pressure, where postgraduate fees climb ever higher and the contact time between student and tutor grows ever shorter. His conviction is a simple one: that painting, and art, should be within reach of anyone with the will and determination, not only those with the means.
With his co-founder, the artist Alison Harper, Andrew has built the Essential School of Painting from the most modest beginnings into an established institution, teaching everyone from the first-time beginner to the postgraduate and professional artist, across courses that run from a single day to a full two years. Together, Andrew and Alison have drawn to the School a remarkable roll of artists, to teach, to lecture, to open their studios and to lend their support, among them Sean Scully RA, the Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry CBE RA, Eileen Cooper OBE RA, Humphrey Ocean RA, Vanessa Jackson RA, Hughie O’Donoghue RA, Jock McFadyen RA, Bob and Roberta Smith OBE RA, Adrian Wiszniewski RSA, Ken Currie RSA, David Mach RA, our Honorary President Sandy Moffat OBE RSA, and the late Leonard McComb RA.
Under Andrew’s leadership the School has grown well beyond its origins. It now teaches year round, in the studio and online, its faculty numbering twenty artist-tutors with a wider circle of supporting artists around them, across a progression that carries an artist from the first year through to our two-year Advanced Painting Course, a rigorous and genuinely affordable alternative to the postgraduate degree, led by the artist Danny Rolph, whose work is held in numerous private and public collections. Around the teaching sits the full life of the School: artist talks, studio and gallery visits, panel discussions, book launches and annual student exhibitions, and a growing programme of scholarships, among them the ESOP Newman Scholarship for young artists.
ESOP is, at heart, a painting school, but it takes a deliberately broad view of what an artist is, and of who one might be. Its artists come from every walk of life and from many fields, architecture, interior design, fashion, medicine, law, and from the arts themselves: practising professional artists, schoolteachers and lecturers from other art schools, who come to deepen their skill. It welcomes work across media too, from sculpture to printmaking, which is why the sculptor Tim Shaw RA is among its regular visitors, and the printmaker and multiskilled artist Katherine Jones RA teaches here regularly.
Where its artists go is the measure of the School. They carry their training well beyond the canvas, into West End theatre companies and the creative teams behind film, including big-budget cinema, and a good number have gone on to teach, in schools and art colleges alike. Over the years ESOP has grown a broad and active body of alumni, who found artist communities and groups of their own, mount their own exhibitions, and are taken on by galleries.
Affordability, a pillar in Andrew’s thinking, remains central. A postgraduate education in painting is beyond the financial reach of many, yet our fees are a fraction of the mainstream courses, with tutors of equal standing and greater contact time. Painting itself is championed at the School as a discipline too often left to languish in art education in favour of more conceptual approaches. Andrew’s aim throughout is the same: to build a community in which students and artists support one another well beyond their courses, and to seed the opportunities that let an artist reach their full potential, and in doing so enrich the wider world.
Andrew brings to this a rare pairing of the creative and the practical: strategy, negotiation, business planning, finance and coaching, drawn from careers in both the fine art and finance industries. He has worked in the media as a producer for the BBC World Service, Africa and Middle East, and is a double honours graduate in Law and Economics from the University of Baroda. In 2004 he and Alison Harper co-founded the Essential School of Painting, and in 2013, after twelve years in retail banking, he joined it full time as Director, leading its strategy, development and growth in the United Kingdom and abroad.
