John DuPret is an English artist and photographer who grew up in a working-class family in the south coast town of Portsmouth. He developed an interest in art and photography during his teenage years, but despite securing a place at a local college of art, family circumstances meant he couldn’t accept it – he had to be a wage-earner and help support the family. For a large part of his life he felt bitterness that rich kids had the privilege of art college when he couldn’t, and refers to starting his life ‘with a plastic spoon in his mouth’.

In 1973 he left the UK with his wife and two children and lived in New Zealand and Australia, where he worked in surreal and faux naïve styles.  His paintings were exhibited in Australia and New Zealand; he was the finalist in three major art awards, and his work was exhibited regularly in the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.

He returned to Europe in 1994, living in south-western France, where he moved strongly into photography and hard-edged realism, exhibiting in Cordes, a Bastide town close to his home, and in Paris. In 1997 he returned to England and for a few years stopped painting, concentrating on his early love of photography. His erotic imagery was published in numerous magazines and books, culminating in 2004 in Sirens, a published collection of his fetish photographs.  In 2005 he started painting again in his trademark ultra-realistic style, usually using his own photographs as the basis for his paintings.

As DuPret writes, ‘I was once a skinny, angry young man; I’m now a chubby, occasionally angry older man, and find a tremendous joy in my work. My birthright plastic spoon means I’ve fought all the way for any success, and can feel pleasure in any achievement as I’m certainly not the product of privilege. Also as an added bonus my influences have been broad, not restricted by the views of any art college tutor. I’m never truly happy unless there is at least one complex painting on the go, as the challenge and complexity of photo-realism and hard-edged realism satisfy a real need.’

John DuPret’s website, which includes illustrations and moving images as well as paintings, can be found here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for suggesting the inclusion of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.