This is an abstract painted portrait of a man with curly blonde hair holding an IPA, with bright blue eyes, painted in bold strokes.

About

Rory McNicol is a contemporary artist living and working in Frome, Somerset.

A BA (Hons) in Illustration led him into a successful digital career spanning major agencies across London — and for a while, the paintbrush lay dormant.

Then came the pandemic. A single brushstroke on a red canvas reignited everything. What started as an afternoon with his kids turned into a portrait of an icon, a gift for his father-in-law's 50th birthday — and the beginning of something he couldn't put down. By 2025 he'd set himself a challenge: one portrait a month. He's still going.

Drawing from popular culture, icons, punk rock, film and lighting, Rory works in an impressionist style — deliberately loose everywhere it can afford to be, and precise where it counts. The eyes are where likeness lives, so that's where the colour gets pushed, the risks get taken, and the real work happens.

He paints icons and individuals, in oil and digital. Whether the subject is a cultural figure or someone's grandmother, the goal is always the same: to find what makes that face theirs.

He also eats pizza. Professionally.

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