Tori Day

Figurative artist Tori Day paints portraits of ‘overlooked’ objects. Drawn to anything old, rusty, chipped or careworn, she gives new life to paraphernalia from previous generations. These humble, everyday bits and pieces have a past unknown to her, each collected from a flea market, antique shop or car boot sale. Often painting onto nineteenth-century floorboards salvaged from Georgian houses, her works transcend time, inscribed with hidden histories and veiled memories.

Tori Day’s Style and Practice

Tori has a Foundation in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and an MA in Fine Art from the University of Brighton. Tori draws inspiration from seventeenth and eighteenth-century Still Life painters such as Chardin, Cotán, Morandi, and Zurbarán, and contemporary painters concerned with ‘the overlooked’. Lighting is also of central importance in her compositions - the use of light elevates her objects, staging them with dramatic chiaroscuro and transforming forgotten bric-a-brac into precious artefacts full of secrets. In this way, her paintings celebrate the many unseen hands through which these re-discovered gems have passed.

Exhibitions and Collections

Tori’s work has been selected for several highly respected contemporary exhibitions, including the Crash Open Salon at Charlie Dutton Gallery, London (2013), the ArtWorks Open at Barbican Arts Group Trust, London (2014), and the Creekside Open at APT Gallery, London (2015 and twice in 2017). Her work is in private collections throughout the UK, Europe, the US, Canada and South Africa.