George Underwood was born in 1947 and went to Beckenham Art School in 1963 at the age of sixteen and then on to Ravensbourne College of Art from 1964-5. Whilst at art school, George pursued a career in music, making a record with David Bowie (The King Bees) and a solo record under the name Calvin James. As a result, friends in the music business started to ask him to do paintings for them and he went freelance, producing iconic artwork for Procol Harem, Gentle Giant, the first T-Rex album and later David Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” and “Ziggy Stardust” album covers. In 1971 he formed the Main Artery Studio and soon became a well known illustrator of fantasy, horror, science fiction books and record covers in particular. In 1972 that George undertook a commission to create a visual record of Bowie's first American "Ziggy Stardust" tour and was involved in the design of the albums/posters/flyers and graphics for The “1980 Floor Show”.
During the early 1970s, George started painting in oils and his work was deeply influenced by the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism, which included such artists as Ernst Fuchs, Rudolph Hausner and Eric Brauer. George regarded the artists of this school as contemporary visionaries, and was fascinated by their use of techniques derived from the old masters, and by the mix of fantasy and realism encapsulated in their paintings. He was also fascinated by the techniques and imagination present in the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch, from which he gets much of his inspiration, especially visible in the degree of detail and impeccable use of colour in his brushwork, directly derived from the Flemish old masters. Imagination is the key word in George's paintings, since nowadays he rarely uses live models, preferring to invent ethereal and otherworldly characters who inhabit their own personal worlds, bathed in an often surreal, luminous play of light.
In 1998 two of his paintings were hung in the RA summer show and soon after he began exhibiting regularly at the Portal Gallery, where he had a number of extremely successful solo shows.One of his collectors, David Bowie, says: "George has, over the years, refined his work to the point where I would put him among the top figurative painters coming out of the UK right now. There’s a sublime isolation surrounding his subjects that really touches the viewer, the figures being both heroic and vulnerable simultaneously. Now that a huge shift to figurative painting is taking place, I would expect to see George’s name pushed further and further to the fore".
George Underwood’s paintings are held in private art collections around the world
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