Chloe Barnes wins Portrait Artist of the Year 2025

Yesterday, Portrait Artist of the Year programme revealed that Chloe Barnes won the Final of Series 12 of Portrait Artist of the Year.

Chloe Barnes and her monoprint of Brian Cox in the Final

I'm splitting my comments about PAOTY Series 12 and the two most recent programmes into three separate posts:

• Today - a review about the Final and the final and commission paintings produced for the Final by the artist 
• Sunday 7th December: the Winner's Programme and the Commission
• Monday 8th December: - a review of the PAOTY series and approach taken this year, and a summary of why the Judges , rather than the programme, continue to annoy so very many viewers and whether the competition is really a competition.

Followed sometime soon after with the details of how to enter Series 13 in 2026!

This review covers:

• The Final: Artists, Sitter and Set
• The Portrait Paintings for the Final
• The Judges' Perspective
• The Final Portraits - and my comments
• Why Chloe Barnes won.

The Final

The Artists working in the Final - watched by the audience
(left to right) Lauren, Katie and Chloe

The audience for many of the episodes was largely female and middle aged to older; plus very proud parents and a smattering of young people who seemed to be associated with individual artists. I think this probably reflects the audience for the programme too.

They are VERY well behaved - as you have to be when filming is taking place. I highly recommend those that want to, to apply to watch the heats next year - and you'll learn a lot more about this competition is really like!

The Artists

Katie Jones, Lauren Ross and Chloe Barnes
sat on the steps outside Battersea Arts centre

In order of the heat they appeared in, they are

• Episode 3: Katie Jones (Instagram) - A community arts tutor who lives and works in Somerset and has a studio on the Mendip Hills.
• Episode 4: Chloe Barnes (Instagram) - a printmaker with a first class honours degree in Illustration and an MA (Distinction) in Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking. She works as a Gallery Production and Studio Manager and lives in Peckham in London. 
• Episode 5: Lauren Ross (Instagram) - an art tutor and painter from Edinburgh. 

You can read more about them in The PAOTY 2025 Semi Finalists + their Exhibition!

The Sitter and the Setup

The Sitter was Brian Cox, the 'media mogul' star of "Succession"who is 79, still active and still acting to great acclaim.

There was no repeat of the craziness of last year when, with absolutely no notice, the contestants suddenly found themselves painting two sitters - with an extra half hour for the challenge!

Instead we had a stripped back set and one sitter this year.

• The Set used a comfortable burnt burnt orange armchair. 

"That armchair is doing a lot of work" Kathleen Soriano

• The cloth hanging at the back was Jute which is very much associated with Brian's home town of Dundee and his ancestors where it has been produced for very many years
• The jute and the armchair, both combined to create a very warm set.

The one benefit for the artists is that were rather nearer the sitter in the Final than they were during the semi final.

The Start: The sitter - Brian Cox - and the setup for the three artists
and how close the cameras are over every artist's shoulder

Review: Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition 2025

There's a new look to the Annual Exhibition of the ROI  - which is an annual exhibition that features a variety of oil paintings by both established and emerging artists, the majority of whom are members of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

The theme of this year's ROI Exhibition is "Home"

I visited last Wednesday for the PV and Awards Ceremony and then again on Saturday afternoon to finish my photographs and it gradually dawned on me that it felt and looked different - and then slowly I realised why that might be.

The Demographic Change

It took a while to work it out - and then I realised, almost all the "old guard" who I've been seeing in the Annual Exhibitions for the last 20 years have almost all gone. 

Of those still alive, relatively few are still painting and exhibiting. 

It feels like the overall demographic of ROI members has really changed - so there are now many more younger artists and many more female artists.

• Older members have been replaced 
• by much younger artists who have done their bit as open artists and 
• who have now progressed to becoming members and 
• in turn, some of them are now officers of the ROI in their middle age. 

I'm now older than most of the people running the show - which feels very different for me too!

I remember well walking around the ROI annual exhibition in 2010 with Adebanji Alade PROI while we discussed how we could make even more of an impression than he was already and become a member!

Last Wednesday, I saw him deliver the most electrifying tub thumping awards ceremony I've seen in years - as President of the ROI. It feels like maybe the engine room has had an overhaul and there's a new drive to reinforce and develop the ROI. 

While on the wall next to the cafe, very sadly, there's a record of a number of the stalwart member exhibitors of the past who have died in the last year. The last year we lost so many in one year was 2022. These included:

• Fred Beckett FROI (1933-2025) who was an ex President of the ROI and the Wapping Group; 
• John McCombs ROI (1943-2025) who never grew tired of painting the Pennine village of Delph and 
• Brian Ryder (1944-2025) -  whose landscapes I always looked forward to seeing and who never ever had a painting rejected by the ROI.  I found these "bon mots" on his website - which I'm sure some of you will value

1. Art is not what we see but what you can make others see.
2. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.
3. A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning plain you end up boring people.
4. Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.”

So it felt a bit like you do on New Year's Eve - it's goodbye to the old guard and hello to all the new much younger painters hoping to become members as well as those who have been around a few years and are now running the show!

Interestingly most of those new artists are ones I first came across online. 

 It was good to see that Greg Mason has now become a member and taken over the role of looking after the website and social media  (PS You may remember Greg from Landscape Artist of the Year - when he abandoned the chosen view and still made it to the Final! (His blog post / My Blog post. For the unitiated, I have a memory like an elephant and an archive which services it well!!)

This is his video tour of the exhibition

Review: Semi Finals of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025

This rather late review is about the semi-finals of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 (Series 12) which was broadcast on Wednesday night - except it wasn't uploaded to Now until a LOT later) Which is why this is late!

It covers various observations about the Semi-Final (the reality and the programme) including:

• The Semi Finalists (Heat winners)
• The Heat Portraits
• The Sitter setup and setting
• Themes of the semi-final
• Judging and Finalists
• Sitters for the Final

Dame Mary Berry sees the portraits after they've been turned around

The Semi Finalists

You can read all about the Semi Finalists in my post last week in my blog post last week about The PAOTY 2025 Semi Finalists + their Exhibition!

They are - in order of the episodes (i.e. not the heats) as follows:

• Episode 1 - Edie Bound (Instagram) - review of Episode 1
• Episode 2 - Paulina Kwietiewsska (Instagram) - review of Episode 2
• Episode 3 - Katie Jones (Instagram) - review of Episode 3
• Episode 4 - Chloe Barnes (Instagram) - review of Episode 4
• Episode 5 - Lauren Ross (Instagram)- review of Episode 5
• Episode 6 - Uthman Wahaab (Instagram) - review of Episode 6
• Episode 7 - Vincent Stokes (Instagram)- review of Episode 7
• Episode 8 - Courteney Bae (Instagram) - review of episode 8

The Heat Portrait Wall

The Wall of Heat Portraits
Left to right: Katie, Uthman, Vincent, Courtenay, Lauren, Paulina, Chloe and Edie

Imagine walking into a semi final. You have absolutely no idea about:

• who your fellow semi-finalists are
• what they can do in four hours!

......and then you see the Heat Portrait Wall (see above i.e. NOT the self portrait wall or both together)

What you don't know as a semi finalist is if any of the others spent time and effort producing an absolute stunner for their self portrait - and then went small for their heat.

Then the artists line up next to the side of the support they're working on - and you begin to get the picture of what you are up against!

The Setting and the Sitter

The Nightmare Set-up

The Artists in the Semi Final enter the room
This is what it looks like - with easels very close together

I've been to a couple of Semi-Finals at the Battersea Arts centre - and it's an absolute nightmare of a set-up.

• Eight artists is just too many to be comfortable and have space to walk around, think etc. 
• Plus the audience seems much closer than in the heats
• Eights artists means ALL must be further away from the sitter than in the heats
• Some are going to have very acute side profiles - if working from life
• Notwithstanding some are going to be painting from devices rather than from the sitter.

Chloe Barnes summed it up rather well in her blog post about the Semi Finals (link further down - near the end of this post)

PAOTY 2025 Semi Final NOT on NOW!!! (Plus I identify who painted which portrait!)

Where is the PAOTY Semi Final on NOW?

I have NOT yet seen the Semi Final of Portrait Artist of the Year (2025)!!!

I'm fuming and have been since last night!  In this year's series, the episode has been available from the Wednesday morning - and on one occasion I watched an episode before it was broadcast. Now the ***** who posts early can't be bothered to post at all!

I'm posting this more in the HOPE that the Semi Final of Portrait Artist of the Year will EVENTUALLY be posted to the NOW streaming service for Sky TV.

Thing is I cannot write a review after watching it through once on Freeview - which is normally what I do - for the first pass on the programme during which I make some notes

I then watch it again at least twice to pick up the themes, add info and fill in the gaps in my notes and get quotes down correctly when I've heard something I want to quote but didn't quite get it all written down.

I cannot think of anything less likely to promote a service offering than messing up the end of a series by not posting it to the way people watch it.

BIG ADVERT: 

DO NOT USE NOW TV 

AS THEY PULL THE PLUG BEFORE THE END!

So until such time as it is posted, and I can actually write my review......

.....I'm going to guess who painted which painting! 

Who painted which portrait in the Semi Final?

I don't actually know who painted which artwork - I'VE NOT YET SEEN THE PROGRAMME!!

So here goes - using the pics of the portraits produced from Instagram.

I got these two straight off. They have very distinctive and consistent styles. 

Top right is by Chloe Barnes (Episode 4) who painted another monochrome on an aluminium panel. I like it. Both faces are good.

The bottom one is by Katie Jones (Episode 3) A few more wrinkles this time....

I'm guessing that both of these two got selected. The painting by Katie is in my opinion the best of the bunch and if she has been selected, then my my guess is she wins the Final next week.

Top left was - this is by Edie Bound (Episode 1) - who I would also put through to the Final. She has a strong and consistent style and can capture a likeness - and in this painting I think she's also captured the sense of fun in Mary Berry. The orange underpainting was the giveaway!

The next two took a bit more thinking about.

Top right is Paulina Kwietiewsska (Episode 2) who I got to through a process of elimination.

Bottom is by Lauren Ross (Episode 5).  The background colour was the first clue and then the flowers in the background and then how she has approached the painting of the portrait. Looks to me like she ran out of time to do the tonal variation in the fur of the dog.

Two of these were really easy.

Top left is easy. Who else paints women with large bodies and very small heads? This is Uthman Wahaab (Episode 6). Nice dog!

It should of course have been the wonderful Laura Cronin who was a wonderful portrait painter and it was a crime to not even shortlist her and her wonderful portrait of Shane Lynch. (That even got mentioned to me yesterday afternoon when I was at the PV for the Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition. There's LOTS of people out there still feeling "miffed" for Laura)

Top right is Courteney Bae (Episode 8) - who has "a very distinctive painting style". I shall say no more.

The bottom is Vincent Stokes (Episode 7) who looks to me like he started with a good idea and then it all fell apart a bit.  Obviously I'm not seeing the whole drawing, but the subject of the portrait ALWAYS needs to be prominent in a portrait competition. It's also a tad too illustrative for me. Great basis for a proper portrait of her as a person though. Just not one in four hours.

The major comment I have on the paintings as a whole is that the big theme of this series for me is PROPORTIONS.

I shall be doing a summary of themes about Series 12 as a whole - including judging approaches and production values after the review of the commission.

I think it needs one....

The PAOTY 2025 Semi Finalists + their Exhibition!

This is a listing of all those who have made it through to the Semi Final of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 (Series 12). 

PLUS news of their Group Show in December in London!

PAOTY 2025 Semi Finalists' Group Show: "Marks of Reflection"

This year, seven of the eight semi finalists have organised a group show of their work ‘Marks of Reflection’ - details below - which is great news for all those who would like a closer look at their work!

I've only just noticed that they are all women apart from Uthman Wahaab. Very sadly Vincent Stokes is not taking part.

The basics are these. At the end of this post are more details about the nature of the exhibition - and the Panel Talk about Contemporary Portraiture.

The show will feature a selection of work featured on the show, as well as new, unseen paintings.

• Venue: Noho Showrooms, 67 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PT (a three minute walk from Oxford Circus )
• Dates: 16th-21st December 2025 (11am - 6pm)
• Panel Discussion: 18th December 2025 with Kate Bryan and Curtis Holder

Portrait Artist of the Year: Heat Winners

Can I suggest you note the size of the heat portraits - there's an awful lot of small ones....

Episode 1

Self portrait and heat painting by Edie Bound

Edie Bound won the first heat to be screened in 2025. This was the profile I used in my review.

Edie Bound (Instagram) - b.2002 is originally from Wiltshire but now lives in South London. She did a foundation year at Camberwell School of Art and then chose to work at a ceramic studio whilst pursuing oil painting in her free time.

Edie being announced as the winner

This was what I said in my review of Episode 1

Tai-Shan thought the self portrait to be a little gem. Edie produced a very small but extremely competent self portrait. The orange carried over into her heat painting. It catches the eye like red but is much less wearing on the eye.

Tai was also a big fan of the minimal mark-making in the heat painting and the fact that, after starting out with the portrait upside down (to mark out the big shapes and tones) she caught the likeness very fast.

"I'm always impressed when young artists go out on a limb and still nail the likeness"

I thought she was very clearly the only artist to have a very good likeness from early one. The fact that her particular method of mark-making was not boring made the end result a racing certainty. 

Episode 2

Paulina Kwietiewsska was the winner of Heat 2.