Art - Tom Homewood

Ten years ago fine artist Tom Homewood was approached by Michael Bell, the MD of a successful advertising agency, at his first solo show. Did he want to come and work for the company, as a concept visualiser? He was 24. He said yes. Today he is the creative director of the company, (formally in Soho and now based in Lewes), which works on ads and brand communication for a range of blue chip companies such as L’Oréal, YSL and Dior.

And Tom is still a fine artist, a rising star in the art world, in fact, about to open an eagerly awaited show at the HQ, which will attract a number of cognoscenti down from the capital.

He has been drawing and painting, in his spare time, all the way through, but has only just started to exhibit his work again. “Painting and drawing is like an illness,” he says, in front of a ham and mustard sandwich in the Lewes Arms. “If you neglect to tap into it regularly then you start to crave it, which is not necessarily a bad thing.”

Tom opens up a folded sheet with a series of crisp, miniature line drawings on it. These are small representations of some of the works that will go up in the HQ Gallery. They are sketches he made in the National Opera Studio, the London-based finishing school for opera singers where the finest talents in the country are tutored. “I was behind the scenes at the dress rehearsal where they were preparing to perform their final showcase,” he says. They are delicate, elegant figures in period costume, drawn fast in a sure hand. (continued overleaf...)