Monday, April 13, 2015

Who will win the NEW £15,000 'Conversations Prize'?

This year the Annual Exhibition of the of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters has a brand new prize - the £15,000 "Conversations" Prize sponsored by Seven Management.
A Conversation piece allows for a scene of two or more characters interacting, with each other and/or with the viewer.
This new prize was announced on this blog last Autumn - see A new £15,000 prize for portrait painting (08 Oct 2014). I was lobbying hard for this new prize before it was announced and I'm really pleased to see that at last we have some quality portraits of more than one person in a painting!  I was beginning to think the expertise was dying out!

Selected Artists

You can see the artwork selected for the exhibition on the competition's webpage (keep scrolling down) and the exhibit will be hung in the Threadneedle Space at the Mall Galleries.

The artists selected and shortlisted for the Conversations Prize are listed below

Shot by Ned by Peter Brown
137cm x 107cm £14,000
Do read the narrative which accompanies this scene of family life.
Peter is one of a few artists I know who is a prolific painter of scenes of groups of people.
Some may be surprised that Pete didn't submit another of his Family Breakfast table paintings
- of which I have seen a few!
Then there's the family at play in the artist's studio genre....... ;)

At Edmund's House by Emma Faludy 
oil on canvas, 110 cm x 161 cm, £7,000
I think Emma has produced an impressive painting from a rather different perspective than most
Ruth and Scampy by Joe Ongie
oil, 91cm x 91cm £1,500
I did wonder whether anybody would include an animal
- and anybody who has ever known a cat know what good listeners they can be!
This just struck me a wonderfully authentic portrait.
The announcement as to who has won the prize will be made at the Private View on Wednesday and I'll be there and trying to get a photo of the winner with their painting!

Exhibition

You can see the artwork selected for the main exhibition on the exhibition microsite - scroll down to see all the images which are on 6 pages.
The Annual Exhibition opens to the public on Thursday 16th April and continues until Friday 1st May. The exhibition will occupy the Main Gallery, North Gallery & Threadneedle Space at the Mall Galleries. Admission is £3 (£2.50 concession and free to Friends of Mall Galleries, National Art Pass holders and under 18s)

1 comment:

  1. Thank you so much for listening to me - so happy not to be dodging the Blog ranked widget ☺️

    ReplyDelete

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