Sholto Blissett

Sholto Blissett (b. 1996, Salisbury, UK) lives and works in London. He read Geography at Durham University before studying for an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, London.

Blissett is known for his fictional landscape paintings depicting architectural follies set in rugged landscapes. At the center of his work is a preoccupation with humanity’s frequent desire to distinguish itself from the rest of nature. Dualisms such as humans and nature, culture and wilderness, and history and biology are challenged in his work. No people are portrayed in Blissett’s work, instead buildings or suggestions of buildings mark their presence. Classical follies coalesce with trees and rocks, or are formed of them entirely, suggesting a blurring of the assumed boundaries between humans and nature. Inspired by the view that humans cannot escape nature and that we never exist beyond its bounds, Blissett paints uncanny worlds where humans are neither free in a state of Arcadian bliss, nor exist in opposition to nature, but are simply and undeniably connected to it.