This year we are very pleased to announce the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement in Visual Arts award goes to Thomas Woods in Year 13.

Thomas has been a passionate and consistent artist throughout his entire school career and in particular has excelled in both Art and Creative Media which he took as Level 3 BTEC options in Sixth form.

His style is extremely vivid, emotive and varied – he is equally adept at painting, video making, print and collage work.

His most striking pieces are often abstract, and designed to provoke an emotional response, like all good Art should. We have been lucky enough to eb able to exhibit many of his pieces around the school where they are always received with positive acclaim.

Thomas is a very level-headed, somewhat quiet artist with a dry sense of humour – he takes great effort in refining and re-developing his work over and over again – it is quite common for him to create dozens of developmental artworks before he arrives at a final outcome.

In discussion about his time studying Visual Arts one of his biggest regrets is that , due to the restrictions imposed during the pandemic, he was not able to experience one of our overseas Art residential trips, which in the past have included Berlin & Venice.

He plans to make up for this however by focussing more deeply into the Creative Arts – in September I am pleased to share that Thomas will be beginning a film making course at The University of the Arts London.