Chris Aggs
RBA

Christopher is primarily an oil painter and occasionally a printmaker who works exclusively from observation. He was born in 1951 trained at the City and Guilds of London Art School then run by Roger deGrey PRA. He progressed to the Royal Academy Schools under Peter Greenham where he benefitted from the, then mandatory, year of life drawing. Chris has exhibited at the RA Summer Show on and off over the years from 1984 to 2025 as well as being included in exhibitions by societies at the Mall Gallery and was elected to the RBA in April 2013.

Chris has work in public and private collections in the UK, Europe and USA. He is married to the illustrator and graphic novelist Patrice Aggs and has a studio in West Sussex.

I am lucky enough to live in a beautiful part of rural West Sussex where I can find an inexhaustible supply of motifs in and around my own house and garden. On wet days or in winter I work on Still Life or interiors indoors, but if the weather permits I prefer to be outside.

My subject, if I have one beyond the painting itself, is the natural world but always with evidence, however slight, of the presence of humans. I spent some time painting on the ‘re-wilded’ estate at Knepp near my studio – even there one is aware of the old field boundaries, gateways and tracks that betray human intervention.

The art I enjoy and try to emulate involves concentrated looking, it cannot be taken in at a glance but aims to slow the pace of life for the onlooker. I need to have some emotional investment in whatever I paint, the process can take a long time and without this connection I find I can’t sustain concentration. I welcome the continual change, to the light, the weather and the season that working ‘en pleine aire’ entails. Change adds a sense of urgency to the paintings and when I’m working well that urgency keeps the paint alive. I think and feel on the palette as I mix paint and as I touch the surface. I relish the moments when a mark appears to sit in space, lit and part of the living world.  It seems to me that there is nothing that I could invent more extraordinary than what’s in front of me.

2025​​ Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London

2012 (10 &04)​National Open Art Competition – Exhibition toured Minerva Theatre, Chichester to Princes Drawing School and Pallant House Chichester.

2008​​ Images of India – Nehru Centre , London

​​Interventions – Worthing Museum & Art Gallery

2007​​ The Discerning Eye – Mall Galleries

​​Lynne Prize Exhibition – Painters and Stainers Hall, City of London

2005​​ Chappel Galleries, Essex. Roderick Barrett Memorial Exhibition

2005/2/00/99 Anna Mei Chadwick The Gallery 27 Cork St, London

1999​ Worthing Museum and Art Gallery – Making Sense of the Everyday – solo retrospective exhibition.

1984/ 85/ 87/ 91/94 & 1997 Royal Academy Summer Show, Piccadilly, London

1991 – 1997   Regular bi-annual shows at Anna Mei Chadwick Gallery, Kings Rd, London

1994 & 95​ Not the Royal Academy – Llwellyn Alexander ltd, Waterloo, London

1990 & 92​ The Terrace Gallery , Worthing (One Person Show)

​Cadogan Contemporary, London – Summer Exhibition.

2025​​ ‘The Artist magazine’ Prize , RBA exhibition

2020​​ The Michael Harding Award , RBA exhibition

2012 ​​‘The Artist magazine’ Prize , RBA exhibition

2010​ National Open Art Competition ‘Yellow Interference’ Southern Region Prizewinner.– Minerva Theatre, Chichester. Prince’s Drawing School, Hoxton, London

1978​​ David Murray Landscape Award

1977 ​​Richard Ford Award for Travel in Spain

1976​​ Rodney Burns Drawing Prize City & Guilds School of Art