This, for me, was a rather unsatisfactory episode of
Landscape Artist of the Year
from the viewers perspective.
Mainly because it
- was totally confusing as to what the view was
- provided different artists with different views
- kept giving us top down or high up perspectives on the place
- nearly all the artists seemed to be very "hemmed in"
- overall, it made for a disappointing episode
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Shortlising announcement in Gasholder Park at St Pancras Basin in North London |
....and I haven't even got started YET it being another URBAN cityscape!
Can
the production team and the Judges not bear to drag themselves away from
London? Is this a cost-cutting exercise?
I’m thinking that my chances of getting into the competition would be better if my submission painting showed the bleakest urban landscape possible!
Episode 4: St Pancras Basin
- the location and weather
- the artists' profiles
- themes arising during the episode
- who was shortlisted and who won
Location and Weather
The view was all over the place - as were the pods.
The location was
St Pancras Basin
- just north of St Pancras Station.
- You can find it here on Google Maps.
- It was originally built by the Midland Railway in 1869 with the aim of loading load canal barges with the coal brought by the railway, mainly from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. It fell into disuse after the coal drops were dismantled.
- Regeneration started - or rather had some false starts - in the 1980 and 1990s
- The 1996 decision to move the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from Waterloo to St Pancras became a major catalyst for change as part of what became a grand plan to redevelop all the old industrial land behind the two stations of Kings Cross and St. Pancras. The results have been very impressive across a number of metrics
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| Top down view of most of the site that provided views for the artists |
This is a competition which requires eight pods lined up in front of a view -
with space for the wildcards and for the production team to work
This site has very limited space and the area is completely hemmed in by:
- The Regents Canal - and St Pancras Basin full of barges
- The high level railway lines coming in and out of St Pancras International Station
- the gasholders - rebuilt on the north side of the site as a result of the changes made at St Pancras station for the Eurostar.
- the new flats built on what was a brownfield site
- the new centre built at Coaldrop Yard
As a result, the eight pods were not all together. Six were on a spot
close to the railway bridge over the canal and two more were further away on
a piece of grass, next to a tree. Except they looked like three to me so
even more confusing....
I found the whole location gobsmackingly complicated and confusing. I couldn't make sense of where anyone was and what views they had to look at and paint. The split-site pods may explain that last bit! Thanks for pointing it out.
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The Split of the Pods six to the left near the bridge over the canal; two to the right on the grass |
I don't think I've ever seen all the pods split up in this way before
However the weather seemed to be sunny and hot with some cloud - at least
judging by the attire of some of the pod artists......
The Artists in the Pods
- a synopsis of their background
- Links to their websites (if they have one) are embedded in their names.
- Social media platforms are also referenced
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| The artists in Episode 4 of LAOTY 2025 |
- Bassam Andari (Instagram) He is an Editorial Consultant. He had a striking submission which was mostly about the light in the sky with the sun setting which the Judges loved.
- Ruth Bateman (Instagram) - (b. 1982, Weymouth, UK) is a is a contemporary painter and visual artist based in North Devon and Cornwall. She integrates creativity with activism and community work. She was recently shortlisted for the 2024 Contemporary British Painting Prize
Her work bridges internal and external landscapes, blending intuitive mark-making with layers of refinement. (website)
- Phill Hosking (Instagram) - Based in Whitstable in Kent, he creates and sculpts digital figures for the toy industry. This was his entry submission for LAOTY 2025 called 'Mirror river' river Stour, Canterbury. Acrylic on canvas, 32x40cm. He works in opaque paint - acrylic or gouache,
- Susan Isaac (Instagram) - Born in Cardiff and now based in Nottinghamshire. Her initial training in fine art & sculpture was followed by a Design History degree, an Industrial Archaeology Masters and an early career as an historic buildings investigator. She is an artist and sculptor and has won several awards. Her submission was a painting of "Senate House Passage, Cambridge" (a place I know well). Previously she has been a wild card winner in 2021 and a shortlisted ‘pod’ contestant in 2022,
I paint mostly in oils in a loose figurative style which occasionally dissolves into the abstract elements of my compositions, combining strong drawing skills with bold use of colour and application of texture. My subjects are mainly towns and seascapes. (website)
- Vlada Popescu (Instagram) Born in Romania, she has recently moved to London after she graduated with a First Class Degree in Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee. She has exhibited in several exhibitions in Romania and Scotland and has also won several competitions and awards. She has a very long but nice post about the day on Instagram.
- Andrea Stables (Instagram) - An artist and urban sketcher, originally from Yorkshire and now based in Liverpool. This is her submission - a painting of a back street in Liverpool with the very typical strong red brickwork.
Tim Slatter (Instagram) - A printmaker from Frome, specialising in etching on steel and zinc, who
also paints in acrylic on canvas and brass. Having looked at his artwork, I
think he's completely wasted here and she should have been on one of the two
episodes in Wales. Tai called his submission "startingly beautiful". I thought it was by far the best submission - except for the fact that being
a print, you know that's going to be difficult to reproduce on the day.
Tina Trimmer (Instagram) - a part time carer and amateur artist from Berkshire who normally works
plein air when creating landscapes.
I've now worked out that they must line them up in the pods in alphabetical
order of their surnames - because it's definitely Tim and Tina in the two pods on their own and
that Tai interview with Andrea seems to suggest she is on the extreme right of
the six pods.
The Wildcards
There were as usual 50 wildcard artists - this time located in Gasholder
Park.
I think they may have been quite constrained as to what they could see in
and around the basin. I would have wandered off to find something more
interesting.
It was apparent that quite a few had never painted outside before.
Did you notice we didn't see a lot of what they were drawing and painting?
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Wildcard artists in Gasholder Park Plus six pods to the left of the Park |
Themes and Learning Points
far too much focus on 'talking heads' - presenters and judges - as though they are the real stars of the show
Never ever painting outside before being on the show
I want to see absolutely everybody selected to appear on the show - whether in a pod or as a wildcard - to do the very best they can do.
Which is why it surprises me so much that this art competition allows people
to apply who have never ever worked outside before.
Why would you not have an application form which asked people to indicate how much plein air painting experience they have?
TIP: All pod participants can only benefit from previous experience of painting plein air. Whether that's from many years experience or only dating back to when you got the notification you're selected for a heat!
The fact is IF your previous experience is ONLY of painting in a studio or indoors, then you are NOT going to give of your best when
- transferred outside and into changing light and weather and
- not having all your home comforts around you - and
- needing to pack them up and bring them with you.
Finding time to do everything you planned to do
One of the penalties of having a lack of plein air experience is
you've absolutely no experience of finding yourself in a place and trying to:
- work out what to do - and where to draw the line i.e. how to design and compose your painting
- plan how you're going to paint your artwork to make the most of the light and colour and shapes
- paint when you have to cope with constantly changing light
- get it all finished within the four hours
The thing is plein air painters do this EVERY TIME they go out to paint. Hence, those who are experienced plein air painters will ALWAYS have a massive advantage over
those with no experience.
The same applies to wildcards.
Trying to make it logical and readable
When I saw this post (about the venue) I really thought it was a send-up. I couldn't believe that anyone could seriously write such rubbish about a landscape venue: 'It has everything - trains, barges, gas holder". What??!!! This is getting beyond ridiculous. Do they take us for hapless, undiscerning half-wits? I think they do.
Just went to the Instagram post specifically to say that as a landscape painter the subject here was about as far away from what I want to paint as anything I can imagine.
I found it very confusing watching it on television as we kept being shown a
multitude of different things to look at. It was a very busy scene. I'd be very interested to know
what it was like for individual artists.
Tai commented on how the challenge of the day how it was going to be a challenge to find a scene which made sense.
I know at least one was very
happy with his position and was off and running painting the basin and the
barges very quickly! However, I'm not sure many were in that particular position!
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| A wildcard using a viewfinder |
TIP: the wise approach to editing and designing and working out what format to work at is to do what this wildcard artist is doing and use a viewfinder
- use two L shaped card pieces fixed together in a frame to create a viewfinder to find what she wanted to paint.
- You can also use your camera or phone to do the same.
- You can also buy viewfinders from art shops
The point is that by excluding the rest of your field of vision you can make better choices as to what seems to be a feasible proposition.
Not painting up to the edges
- TIP Unpainted edges just draw the eye - particularly if a wash has not been applied to the whole support to create a ground for developing a painting - and what you see is a white edge
- When at home and it's a watercolour you can either:
- use tape to fix your paper to a board and then whip off the paint at the end and you have nice clean edges
- apply a mat to cover up the parts not painted.
- In which case, if you do the same thing in a heat, you must make sure you bring a mat to the heat and apply it in front of your artwork!!!
- When you're working on a board, an artwork which doesn't paint to the edges is called "a study" and not a finished painting in my book.
- Note that most professional artists typically do not enter artwork in an exhibition if they've worked in oil or acrylics and have not painted up to the edge
The Judges are obviously NOT impressed by this sort of approach. I'm on their
side with this one.
Quite small paintings in the heat
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| Heat Paintings |
I measure based on the bar at the bottom of the easel which they sit on. That and the pics of artists with their heat paintings (see below).
One of the key things is that those with experience have a knowledge of what size of support is comfortable for them to paint on and complete within a certain timescale.
TIP: So get out there and create a painting plein air in 2 shifts of two hours each. Then
- repeat as much as you can before your heat - and
- see if going smaller or bigger helps.
TIP: This is my experience in relation to size. I used to try working on what I'd call small/medium supports - similar in size to those used by most pod artists in this heat.
- However I was absolutely gobsmacked the first time I worked on 50x70cm pastelmat and found it so much easier than working smaller.
- Going bigger
- stops you working too tight - and
- helps you avoid making mistakes with your drawing and proportions - because you've got the space to get it right.
- After that I flew around the world with 50x70cm pastelmat supports sandwiched between foam core in my suitcase and covered with a large polythene bag.
Decision Time
The Wildcard Winner
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| The Wildcard winning painting by Lex Robertson |
The Wildcard Winner was Lex Robertson (Instagram) with a very large painting of the view towards the water tower. Lex appears to be a student at the University of the Arts London
(Camberwell). He produced an atmospheric depiction of the canal and the day.
Kathleen said had it a great sense of bravura and of place. In fact, dare I say
this, I liked it better than a number of the pod paintings - and more than the winner of the heat!
I think he's one of the best wildcards we've had so far and given the Judges predisposition to favour up and coming artists he may be in with a good chance of getting to the semi-finals. That said I can see no other landscapes on his Instagram so maybe not....
I think he's one of the best wildcards we've had so far and given the Judges predisposition to favour up and coming artists he may be in with a good chance of getting to the semi-finals. That said I can see no other landscapes on his Instagram so maybe not....
Here's another wildcard artist - Catherine Haye - who is self-taught and we did not see in the programme. (I am looking for you all on Instagram!)
The Heat Paintings
Here are the heat paintings by all the pod artists. I'm not sure you can tell they were all painting in a line at the same place.
TIP My "rule of thumb" for a decent painting (which does not seem to be one followed by the Judges) is:
- must read clearly at a distance - and beckon you to come look
- must get MORE interesting as you get close up
For me the ones which read really clearly at a distance are: all the ones with barges in the St. Pancras Basin, Tim Slatter's very graphic one and Andrea Stables. The one which got much better as you got closer was Phill Hocking's painting (top right below).
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| clockwise from top left: Susan Isaac, Phill Hosking, Tim Sladder and Vlada Popescu |
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| clockwise from top left: Bassam Andari, Ruth Bateman, Tina Trimmer and Andrea Stables |
The Shortlist
This is the lineup to hear the shortlist
The shortlist selected from this week's artists were:
- Susan Isaac
- Phill Hosking
- Andrea Stables
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| Shortlisted artists - submission and heat paintings |
Below is my commentary on each of the shortlisted artists in turn.
Susan Isaac
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| Submission and heat painting by Susan Isaac |
I much preferred her submission painting. Senate House Passage in
Cambridge is a place I know very well and I recognised straight away when
I saw this painting for the first time. It's curiously monochromatic and
distorted and very nearly has the vanishing point in the centre of the
painting - but there's something about it which makes you want to look at
the entire painting.
I am emphatically not a fan of her heat painting. Mainly because I detest
paintings making a lot of use of heavy black lines of impasto black. I
also wasn't a fan of the invented and heavy sky. The use of the heavy
black paint reminded me of John Bratby's use of heavy black lines - which
I'm very much not a fan of. It always reminds me of primary school
children who have to draw the outline first and then colour in. No lost or
soft edges - that's not my cup of tea.
I'd have liked to see what she could have done if she's brought a
bigger board to paint on. As it was, her heat painting felt very compressed and claustrophobic and
the one thing it did not do for me is convey the sense of the place on the
day. It told us far more about how this painter liked to paint.
I know there will be fans of impasto painting who will love it. I'm just
not one of them.
The Judges said...
- she pulled it out of the bag
- there's so much energy in the sky and the energy comes from the volume of the paint and how it's been put on and moves around
- her colour range is amazing (ME: are we looking at the same paintings???)
- what makes it more contemporary is the paint application with the palette knife is ugly, Susan is not making her painting look "nice".
Phill Hosking
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| Submission and heat painting by Phill Hosking |
There's a reason why people like traditional paintings. People who
paint in ways which make a place recognisable and create colour palettes
which are resonant of place and pleasing on the eye at the same time are
always going to find people who want their art.
It strikes me Phill Hosking is one such painter.
I liked both his submission and his heat painting. He demonstrated very
clearly to me that he can handle both light and shade and different colour
palettes appropriate to place. I also loved his painting of water in both paintings.
He's not going to get the contemporary art market whirring but he I could
see him making a very creditable painting of the south of France.
The Judges said....
- his heat painting is less "done" than what he might normally do
- love the fact everything is positioned so high up which gives us lots of water
- but it feels very safe
- we fell in love with the underpainting - but there's enough here that's playful
- Kathleen is fally more and more in love with his submission piece - they're both very comforting
- Phill is somebody who has a feeling for an inconsequential place - but they're full of meaning
- it looks "trad" and it feels "trad" but it's a little bit more sophisticated than that
Andrea Stables
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| Submission and heat painting by Andrea Stables |
Andrea Stables has a great sense of depth. Her paintings
demonstrate an ability to discern shapes accurately and to paint them
using tone and colour in a way which creates a pathway for our eyes to
travel through her paintings.
I also like the way she paints skies and background vegetation in a more
graphic way which suggests they are at some distance from the subject in
the immediate foreground. It's a very effective technique.
She's also excellent at the inconsequential. Finding corners that others
would not consider as subjects of a painting and then finding ways to
meld, compose and create which results in interesting paintings.
She has a very good eye! That's one of my best compliments.
The Judges said:
- Andrea could see this, this morning and then she just painted it
- Initially they were concerned about her overstyling her painting - concerned that she might stylise the trees and the foliage too much - but she's held it back and it works really well
- she is always playing with similar elemts to build these very tightly constructed landscapes
- the clarity of her submission pushes it into being "too graphic" and Tai prefers the painterliness of the heat painting
- "it's completely charming in how boring it is"
How pretentious can you (the Judges) get is what I say!
Heat Winner
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"I'm totally shocked and overwhelmed and astonished"
I knew it was going to be Susan as soon as Kate admitted she had made a
mistake. I'll just leave that hanging....
The Judges said she was able to capture history without getting caught up in the detail.
- she pulled it out of the bag with her spectacular sky
- they liked her reduced palette and "historical heft" (weight)
Is this message to all artists who like detail not to bother entering? I don't know but to my mind saying things like that is very likely to deter some artists....
I'll just leave that hanging too....
Finally, very many thanks to all those who have been saying how much they like reading my reviews
These days I get more enjoyment out of reading your reviews, than watching the actual programme!
Next Week
The heat is back in North Wales and this time the view is of the Dinorwic Quarry, the second largest slate quarry in Wales which closed in 1969.
Reference
The programme is broadcast
by Sky Arts ( available on Sky, Now TV and Channel 36 on Freeview) and
the films are made by Storyvault Films.
Series 10: Episodes to date
- Review: Episode 1 of Landscape Artist of the Year Series 10 (2025) - Hampton Court
- Review: Episode 2 of Landscape Artist of the Year Series 10 (2025) - Snowdon, Wales
- Review: Episode 3 of Landscape Artist of the Year Series 10 (2025) - Clifton Suspension Bridge
- see my blog post about Call for Entries - Landscape Artist of the Year 2026 (Series 11). The deadline for submission is NOON on Friday 3rd May 2024 - and entries are ONLY accepted online.
- lists all reviews I've published for series episodes broadcast between 2018 and 2024
- together with the topics / themes /TIPS I identified in each episode.
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