Paul Brandford has recently been a nominated finalist in The Threadneedle figurative Prize 2008 and he won First prize in The Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2003. He studied at The Royal Academy Schools and he lives and works in London. Brandford's paintings are often humorous and satyrical a critique of the culture of celebriity, fame, infamy and its mediated portrayal. Many of his paintings are of the anti hero, those who maybe shouldn't be portrayed and are certainly not heroes. But his paintings have an acuity, a wit and a cutting satyrical edge which slices through the rhetoric and lays bare the reality of the subject matter. These paintings explore the continual historicity of portraiture.  Royalty, political leaders, Dictators and wannabe leaders question the fundamental of the celebratory portrait 

Paul Brandford's paintings toy with charicature and the cartoon in a traditional painterly style more akin to both Hogarth and Goya. This new body of paintings are snapshots  from our time, mediated, consumed, digested and finally regurgitated. These paintings are as much about the media and its dissemination, its arguments and positions as they are about celebrity, the all consuming  pervasiveness of our culture and the topical events which become news.

Exhibitions include: The Threadneedle Prize The Mall Galleries London 2008,  Drawings For All, Gainsborough's House (1990, 1994, 2002),Resist, Crescent Arts, Scarborough (2003) and the Shewsbury Sotheby's Open, Shrewsbury Art Gallery and Museum (2003).  First Prize The Jerwood Drawing Prize 2003.