Teresa Witz is an internationally renowned portrait painter of modern icons – celebrity, athletes, and sporting figures – as well as accepting individual commissions for portraits. A year after achieving her Doctorate in Fine Art, she was appointed one of the official Olympic artists for the London 2012 Games.
For the Games, Teresa, produced 10 highly detailed life-sized paintings portraying Olympic and Paralympic athletes. The original oil paintings, completed over three years, were produced after long lengths of time spent with the individual athletes, in order for the artist to capture their personalities, physical presence and approaches to competing. She met them, travelled around the country to watch and sketch them in training, and the athletes then visited her studio in east London.
These paintings were shown around Britain in the run up to the Games and were then exhibited at Heathrow’s T5 Gallery. Copies of the paintings were produced for a special outside installation over the entire duration of the Olympics. They were exhibited throughout Jubilee Park at Canary Wharf – one of London’s main social hubs for enjoying the Games.
Teresa Witz was born in Cyprus and brought up in Plymouth. She received her BA Hons at the Wolverhampton College of Art and throughout the years continued her formal education with a certificate in Art Education and Art Therapy from the Birmingham School of Art Education, studied Fine Art Practice at Sir John Cass School of Art and most recently an M.A. in Fine Art in 2001 and was awarded a Doctorate in Fine Art in 2008 from the University of East London.
Copyright Teresa Witz
