Christopher Thompson is an award winning artist, he was born in Grimsby in 1969 and is now based in London. After graduating from Norwich School of Art Thompson completed his Post-Graduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 1997. He has since exhibited his paintings widely at home and abroad in numerous solo and group shows. His works now feature in many collections around the world, most notably, in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Looking closely at light, shadow, line and colour, Thompson studies houses, capturing them with a painterly realism and intriguing narrative. They are houses as portraits, each with their own characteristics, personalities and idiosyncrasies. All real buildings that have sparked Chris’s imagination and have been transformed. Placed into unexpected settings, their names are a clue to the people who live beyond the walls and windows. A small cat inhabits each dwelling, tracing a path from house to house, sometimes active but mostly just watching, a silent witness. Thompson explains: “My paintings are a celebration of the everyday, the half noticed and the overlooked. From an isolated building next to a silent canal, an unremarkable row of houses to hidden passageways. These are all parts of London and Stamford but they could be anywhere. They are places full of subdued dramas, brought to life by the patterns of shadows. The city becoming an arena of abstract lights and shapes, layered and dense, the poetry of reality. Moments that are repeated day after day, the flickering reflections of water, a lamp post basking in the morning sun, buildings revealed as sunlight draws across them and the tranquillity of the towpath as night draws in. People appear sometimes, in supporting roles, but the places never appear empty as they have their own personalities and their own stories to tell.”