Fine artist · South Africa · Maidenhead, Berkshire
Fifty years of looking. Fifty years of painting.
Donna White builds her canvases in layers: paint poured, dripped and drawn until landscapes, flowers and figures surface from the texture. Shown at the Royal Academy and across the UK, with over 500 paintings in collections around the world.
Selected works
From the studio
Series
Explore by series
“If you can’t find the right colour, then use the wrong one.”
Donna White, in her own words
The technique
Built in layers. Freed by drips.
Donna works large and instinctively. Paint is poured, flicked and drawn in thin washes that run and pool, so every canvas keeps the memory of how it was made. Colour, often startling, always deliberate, does the drawing; texture does the modelling.
Trained first in photorealism, she spent decades loosening its grip. What survives is the discipline of looking; what arrived later is the freedom.
Read the full storyExhibitions & recognition
Over 500 paintings now hang in collections around the world, from Mozambique to Zurich, Vancouver to Hamburg.
Royal Academy of Arts
Summer Exhibition, London
Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
Royal West of England Academy
Open Exhibition, Bristol
IMAGINARIUM (solo exhibition)
Bracknell Gallery, South Hill Park, Berkshire (2014)
Art South Africa Today
Exhibition curated by the critic Clement Greenberg
Pretoria Art Museum
Retrospective exhibition of Photorealism
Commissions
A painting made for your room.
Donna takes on a small number of landscape and portrait commissions each year. Every one begins with the space it is meant for: its light, its colours, its story. Original paintings currently range from £500 to £3,750.
Commission a painting
A commissioned landscape, in situ.
Journal
Beyond the canvas
The Thames, colour, and the ideas behind IMAGINARIUM: stories from Donna's paintings and studio.
Read the journal →Visiting the studio