My name is Jim Carpenter and I specialise in pastel and oil painting.

The bulk of my work is figurative and concentrates on people or animals and although I work in a detailed and realistic style, I still like to work intuitively and look to improve the visual impact of a painting by enhancing the mood or personality of the subject.

Most of my time is dedicated to portrait commissions of family, loved ones, pets, even your favourite celebrity. I work from supplied photographs which must be of good, clear quality, my constant mantra is “the better the photo, the better the painting.” Guidance on what makes a good photograph for me to work from can be found in “Pricing.”

When I’m not busy with portrait commissions, I like to work on my own series of oil paintings which I show in various exhibitions and art fairs around the south of England. When painting my own non-commissioned pieces I often use a theme or narrative as inspiration for the piece which can be plucked from anything I.E…the words of a song title or a lyric or just dredged up from a book I’ve read or movie scene and even sometimes the spark comes from an old memory.

Welcome to my website…