Andrew Torr

Born in Yorkshire in 1965, Andrew Torr moved to London in 1983 to study painting under Bernard Cohen at Wimbledon School of Art. He has lived and worked in the capital since completing his degree in 1987 initially from a studio in Cable Street in the East End and latterly in Wandsworth.

Much of his work has been an attempt to render and explore the city, and most recently, Torr has been working on a series of paintings of suburban housing estates; the modest, all-purpose, vernacular architecture, ubiquitous in UK towns and cities. These paintings share the same interest in big spaces and the lived environment but, although they are formal paintings, they are charged with a quiet melancholy
and ennui.

In 1992, Torr took a forced sabbatical after suffering a serious accident which severed all the tendons and nerves of his right hand. This may well have finished his career but surgeons were able to reattach the connective tissue and, through therapy and determination, he regained enough dexterity to return to painting.