Saied Dai RP NEAC

Bio

Saied Dai is Persian by birth, born in Tehran in 1958 and came to England at the age of six. He began his seven years of art training at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design and shortly after was awarded a place at the Royal Academy of Arts where he received his Post Graduate Diploma in Painting. There, he was privileged to come into contact with artists of real distinction such as Peter Greenham, Norman Blamey and Roderic Barrett.

He was regarded well enough to be invited back to the RA Schools to teach under Leonard McComb’s Keepership, where drawing was seen to be the cornerstone of all the disciplines. He says, “I was fortunate enough to be taught art as architecture. Drawing reveals the way an artist thinks. It is the means by which one makes visual relationships.”

On recommendation from Norman Blamey RA, Saied was also placed to teach at the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture in Regent’s Park. After being elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2004, he won the prestigious Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture and the Society’s Gold Medal in 2006, followed by the Prince of Wales Drawing Award in 2007.

Scholarships, Awards, Prizes

  • 2023 – The William Lock Portrait Prize, Royal Society of Portrait Painters

  • 2020 – Ondaatje Prize winner for Portraiture, Royal Society of Portrait Painters

  • 2018 – RP Portrait Prize, Mall Galleries,

  • 2016 – ‘Still Life’ Documentary Film, made by Jonathan Stedall (see YouTube)

  • 2014 – winner of Changing Faces Prize, Royal Society of Portrait Painters

  • 2009 – Elected to The New English Art Club

  • 2007 – The Prince of Wales Drawing School Award, for Portrait Drawing,

  • Royal Society of Portrait Painters

  • 2006 – Ondaatje Prize winner for Portraiture, Royal Society of Portrait Painters

  • 2004 – Elected to The Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London

  • 2002 – BBC Documentary on Elizabeth 1, (‘Great Britons’ series) 35 pieces of artwork

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