Owain Hunt RP

Owain is a British painter based in the United Kingdom. He is self-taught, having studied BSc Economics at the University of Bristol. Hunt’s practice concerns the human condition and the subjectivity of time; contemplating the transience of memory and the brevity of life itself. Working from direct observation and delicately elicited drawings, his work emerges from a shared, fleeting existence with his sitters.

His sitters are carefully selected, to include members of his family, old friends and strangers. Processed through paint and contorted by the fragile nature of recollection, the paintings reflect on presence, absence and the life’s brevity. The figures that inhabit them are not simply subjects, but vehicles through which broader questions of duration, connection and mortality become visible. 

Image: Owain Hunt RP, Reflection at 24

Awards & Collections

Hunt’s work belongs to private collections in The United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Australia and the United States. Most noticeably, Hunt has shown with The Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award, The Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize, The ING Discerning Eye, The Sequested Prize, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and The New English Art Club, of which he is a current recipient of the society’s Drawing Bursary.  

Selected Awards 

2023 – The Michael Harding Award for the Most Distinguished Oil Painting – Green and Stone Summer Exhibition 

2023 – The New English Art Club Scholarship Year 

2023 – The Sequested Prize Finalist 

2021 – The John Lynn Commemorative Award for a Young Artist – Royal Society of British Artists 

2020 – The Emerging Artist Prize – Royal Institute of Oil Painters 

2020 – The Castlegate Prize Finalist 

2019 – The Geoffrey Vivis Memorial Award – The Royal Society of British Artists