Grace Payne-Kumar is a portrait painter based in Wiltshire. Born in Hong Kong, she begun her training at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy at the age of 18. Following the tradition of Old Masters like Van Dyck, Titian and Velasquez, painting from life is central to her work.
Grace moved to Scotland to begin her degree at the University of Edinburgh, where she was selected as a finalist for the Scottish Portrait Awards and won the Member’s Choice Award in 2019. She also taught at The Edinburgh Drawing School throughout her time at university.
In 2020, Grace’s work, ‘Portrait of Niccolo’ granted her the commission to paint Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian. In 2022 it was hung in Parliament Hall on the Royal Mile alongside Raeburn and Sargent’s works, where it remains permanently.
The growing recognition of her work lead to her 2021 exhibition ‘About Face’ held by the Scottish Arts Club, displaying the culmination of her portraits in Florence and Edinburgh. She has also held a solo exhibition at Sarum Studio, Wiltshire and currently takes commissions at her studio The Mount House Gallery, Marlborough. Grace will remain Artist in Residence for Marlborough College, until June 2025.
Grace works from life with a limited flesh palette and key the subject to nature, using the ‘sight-size method’. Distance is the most important element of this method as by stepping back she is able to see the abstract shape as a whole and create a more vivid, honest representation of the sitter.