A stranger in paradise ... Gary Hume at White Cube.
Photograph: Ben Westoby/White Cube

Gary Hume

Hume was born in 1962 in Tenterden, Kent. He attended Homewood School. He graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1988. His work was included in both Freeze, an exhibition organised by Damien Hirst in 1988, and East Country Yard, a warehouse exhibition organised by Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas in 1990. Hume has become known for depicting everyday subjects using high-gloss industrial paints. His earliest notable works are his "door paintings", life-size representations of hospital doors. These proved a critical success, being shown in Germany and the United States, as well as attracting the attention of collector Charles Saatchi. Hume's work was included in the 1995 exhibition Brilliant!, a showcase of work by YBA artists. In 1997, his work was included in Sensation, a touring show of the Charles Saatchi art collection at the Royal Academy, London. Hume abandoned doors in the mid-1990s, turning to paintings in household gloss paint on aluminium panel, for these often used appropriated images, including pictures of celebrities (e.g. DJ Tony Blackburn) and animals. Around 2005, Hume revisited his Door pictures, this time anthropomorphising the doors, arranging them into pairs of lovers and giving them the titles The Couple and The Argument.

Besides his London studio, Hume maintains a second studio in a converted barn on the grounds of a former chicken farm in New York's Catskill Mountains region.