Trained at the Slade School of Art (and a Slade prize-winner) Tony Birks-Hay is influenced by Cezanne, Matisse, Bomberg and the Scottish Colourists, and as a sculptor by his teacher and mentor Henry Moore. He has a reputation as a portrait painter in oils and for portrait sculpture in bronze and marble, and also paints expressionist landscapes, with inspiration from Wales, Ireland and Portugal.

Tony Birks-Hay is a painter of the bold statement. In recent landscapes ... he has gone for the abstract element of the paint mark. These are paintings to be reckoned with. Ben Levene RA

Run your eyes over Tony's paintings and be hugely rewarded. These are quietly passionate works. Anthony Green RA

Very expressive and involving landscapes of Portugal and France - a testament to direct vision and energy. Bruce Killeen RWA

First exhibited at the Manchester Academy at the age of 15, Tony Birks-Hay's first one-man show was in Oxford when he was 22. He has exhibited at the Royal Academy from the age of 26, and many times at the Royal West of England Academy, where he has been an invited artist. In the main he avoids group exhibitions, but still shows his work at the Millfield Open each summer.

As a portrait sculptor, he was commissioned to make the head in bronze of Lord Tonypandy after the latter's retirement as Speaker of the House of Commons and, more recently, Sir Jonathan Miller.

The artist has had one-man exhibitions since 2006 in Bath, Sherborne, Ely, London and Germany.