BP Portrait Award 2012 - 55 Selected Artists

These are the 55 artists whose portrait paintings have been selected for the BP Portrait Award 2012 Exhibition - categorised by country.  The BP Portrait Award has a first prize of £25,000.

The exhibition opens to the public on 21 June at the National Portrait Gallery in London - until 23 September after which it will tour the UK - with exhibitions in Edinburgh and Exeter

Mr Kitazawa's Noodle Bar, Tokyo
by Carl Randall, 2012
© Carl Randall

Click the link in the artist's name to see their website (or that of the artist's gallery) and more or their paintings and portraits

Artist:	Title of work:	Country:
Peter Wegner	Jack	Australia
Erik Olsen	The Skateboarder	Canada
Lesley McCubbin	Robin	Canada
Agata Wojcieszkiewicz	Anita and her studio	England
Alan Coulson	Richie Culver SHORTLISTED	England
Alex Hanna	Alex side view	England
Anastasia Pollard	Tim	England
Ben Ashton	Lindsay Lohan	England
Benjamin Sullivan	Head Porter	England
Carl Randall	Mr.Kitazawa's Noodle Bar, Tokyo	England
Edward Sutcliffe	Trying to be something else	England
Eileen Hogan	Paul Ruddock	England
Elizabeth Thayer	Tony	England
Emma Wesley	Nick in Tartan Trousers	England
Frances Bell	Postman	England
Isabella Watling	The Importance of being Glen	England
Ismail Acar	Pasha Triptych	England
James Stewart	Sam Waley-Cohen and Irilut	England
Jamie Routley	Tony Lewis SHORTLISTED	England
Jean Paul Tibbles	Self-portrait	England
Leo Holloway	Jane	England
Louise Pragnell	Tom	England
Mary Jane Ansell	Jonathan (Dad)	England
Miriam Escofet	John Godfrey CBE, 2010 High Sheriff	England
Nancy Fletcher	The Portrait Painter	England
Nathalie Beauvillain Scott	Bruised	England
Nathan Ford	Joachim	England
Paul Moyse	Rasputin always wins	England
Ray Richardson	Irish Frank	England
Rupert Alexander	Rob Fahey on Court	England
Ruth Murray	Tessa and the clay heads	England
Tim Benson	92 Years	England
Timothy Gatenby	Mary waiting to go rollercasting	England
Toby Mulligan	About Time	England
Tony Noble	The Twins: Portrait of my wife Jackie and her sister Christine.	England
Vanessa Lubach	Rosie and Pumpkin	England
Antonios Titakis	Silent Eyes	Greece
Claire Kerr	Self-portrait as an Unknown Gentleman	Ireland
Roni Taharlev	Self-portrait	Israel
Gianluca Capaldo	What I See in Her . (Quello che vedo in lei	Italy
Ian Cumberland	Today You Were Far Away	Northern Ireland
Szekely Kiraly Bogdan Ioan	The Spoken Truth	Romania
Alexandra Gardner	Swallow	Scotland
Graeme Wilcox	Ian (with prop)	Scotland
Peter Goodfellow	All dressed up for mam and dad	Scotland
Antonio Barahona	Fatima	Spain
Aurelio Rodriguez Lopez	Mr Lascelle  Barrow	Spain
Ignacio Estudillo	El abuelo (Augusta Estudillo) SHORTLISTED	Spain
Ivan Franco Fraga	LE ( SALMACIS Num.3 )	Spain
Aleah Chapin	Auntie SHORTLISTED	USA
David Eichenberg	Devan	USA
Erin Wozniak	Wes's Dream	USA
Alan Salisbury	Self-portrait with self portraits with reference to 'Boy with a basket of fruit' by Caravagio	Wales
Colin Davidson	The Dialects Of Silence (Portrait of Michael Longley)	Irish living in Wales
Tom Dewhurst	Tim	Wales

You can see the shortlisted artists here BP Portrait Award 2012 - The Shortlist.  They are eligible for the cash award of £25,000 for the painting judged to be best portrait in the competition.

I recognise a number of names - but my current thinking is that this exhibition includes a lot of artists who are new to the BP Portrait Award exhibition.

This is a chart of the selected artists by country

Due to rounding: 2% = 1 artist; 4% = 2 artists; 5% = 3 artists 7% = 4 artists

Below is a comparison of last year's entries by country with this year's.  There's been

• a small increase in the number selected from the UK (73%), 
• a small decrease in those selected from European countries outside the UK (16%), 
• the North Americans remain just below 10% of the overall selected artists and 
• an Australian artist (a former winner of the 2006 Doug Moran Portrait Prize) has submitted work and been selected

	2011	2,012
UK	70%	73%
Europe (ex. UK)	21%	16%
North America	9%	9%
Other	0%	2%

Thanks to all at the NPG Press Office for their assistance with this post.

You can find

• links to all my past posts about the BP Portrait Award on my website Portraiture - Resources for Artists - plus links to
• more information about the award in Portrait Competitions in the UK - BP Portrait Award
• past prizewinners - BP Portrait Award Winners 1990-2011
• More about the 2012 BP Portrait Award open competition in Call for Entries: BP Portrait Award 2012

Note:  The reason for choosing a group portrait for the image for this post is I would really like to see a prize for those who produce portraits of more than one person.  I think it's such a pity that this challenging aspect of portraiture is not yet recognised with a major prize.  I thought Mr Kitazawa's Noodle Bar, Tokyo by Carl Randall is really great!