Jonathan Yeo didn’t go to art school but took up painting while recovering from Hodgkins Disease in his early 20s. He became known as a contemporary portraitist in the late 1990s, exhibiting frequently at the the National Portrait Gallery . His best known work includes a world weary Tony Blair painted at the very end of his premiership, an iconic painting of Erin O’Connor which was used widely to advertise the NPG and now familiar images of Prince Philip, Dennis Hopper and Grayson Perry.
After a presidential commission was cancelled, Yeo instead made a collage of George W Bush which was unveiled at Lazarides Gallery, London, in 2007. Made entirely from pornographic magazines, it marked a new direction in his work, and subsequent subjects to receive the collage treatment include Hugh Heffner, Mary Whitehouse , Wyndham Lewis, Lucian Freud and Paris Hilton . The exhibition "Blue Period" in 2008 included nudes as well as portraits made the same way, and there have been subsequent shows in London, New York, Bethlehem and Walsall.
Further painting and collage shows are planned for Europe and America between now and the end of 2010. We will try to keep the news page updated as they happen.
Yeo is married to former journalist Shebah Rona
