After completing a postgraduate Art History degree at the University of St Andrews in 2018, 24 year old Rory has been working been working full-time as an artist. Both his parents are professional painters and taught Rory to paint from an early age. However, it wasn’t until after university that he started to paint full-time in his parents’ studio space in Carnoustie. Rory's artistic practice fuses his formal art historical education with the traditional mode of oil painting in order to reframe Renaissance and Baroque painting in the twenty-first century. Through juxtaposition and adjustment of scale he alters the perception of works by canonical artistic figures — such as Diego Velazquez or Luca Giordano. These painted figures are removed from their original context and placed into the palm of a hand, at the top of a cloud or submerged in inky black water. It is through this change that these historical works are charged with alternate meanings which have a contemporary relevance. Rory joined Quantum in the autumn of 2020.
