MAKING A MARK: Ben MacGregor wins Landscape Artist of the Year 2025

This review is about the Final of Series 10 of Landscape Artist of the Year 2025 which was won by Ben MacGregor.

Final of Series 10 of Landscape Artist of the Year
The Artists and Stonehenge - early morning

The Final of Series 10 of Landscape Artist of the Year (2025) was held at Stonehenge last summer - and was broadcast on Sky Arts last Wednesday.

Following this review of the Final, there are two more posts to go

Review of the Commission (after I've got the stepladders out, rescued my holiday photos and found the ones where I visited Cezanne's studio!)
Review of the Series as a whole.

About this post

Below you can read about

Artists in the Final
Venue: Where/when the Final was held plus observations about the subject
Observations, Themes and Tips
Decision Time:

The Commissions
The Final Paintings
The final decision

The Winner

As always the programme about the Final is always something of a bit of an odd show since

5 other participants are missing
there is the need to recap the journey to the Final
plus a more indepth profile of each artist AND
the story of the three artists doing a commission between the semi-finals and the Final

You can find all my reviews of previous programmes in this series at the end of this post. Plus how to apply for the next series which will be filmed this summer in six heats in three places around the UK.

The Final

The Finalists (left to right):
Kieran Guckian, Susan Isaace and Ben MacGregor

The three artists in the Final were - in order of the heats they won - were:

HEAT 1: Ben McGregor (Instagram + new Instagram account post broadcast) - a self-taught amateur artist based in London. Born in 1979, he grew up in Surrey. He began to be interested in art when in 2015 he returned to the UK after working overseas. He now runs a luxury bespoke furniture company. He's never studied art formally but has, instead, studied artists whose work he liked - including post-impressionists and more contemporary painters.
HEAT 3: Kieran Guckian (Instagram) - Born in Dublin, Kieran attended Crawford College of Art and Design graduating with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting. He switched from his career in web design to becoming a full time artist a year prior to the heat - so this was a big opportunity for him.
HEAT 4: Susan Isaac (Instagram) - Born in Cardiff and now based on a farm 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

The Final: Location and Timing

The Pods at Stonehenge

On the face of it, when the programme started, the choice of iconic megalithic Stone Circle seems rather a good one. I'd guessed they'd start very early and the early morning mist seemed very appropriate to the place - and provided no clues as to what the weather would be like!

Then we began to realise just how far the Pods were from the stones. Look at how tiny the pods are below - and how faw away from the Circle they are.

Distance between the Stone Circle and the Pods

......and then the visitors started to arrive. Loads of them!

So not only were the Pods at some distance - but they also had a steady stream of visitors in view - between the stones and the pods. All day long!

I thought Sky Arts might have shelled out and booked the place for the whole day - from 9.30am to 7pm - and then somebody told me what the admission ticket cost!

the filming was during the standard season of June to August if filmed between Monday and Friday (if it had been at the weekend it would have been peak season!)
a Family Ticket - for 2 adults and up to 3 children would be £72.50
two adults would cost £56 on the day
so the likely cost to hire the place for the day must be well in excess of £50,000

You only need to look at the numbers visiting - which was a steady stream through out the day to realise that booking the place to have no visitors would have been a high five if not a six figure sum.

So the artists watched a steady stream of visitors and the sun did not come out giving them a very flat grey light throughout the day - reducing the scope for contrast and edge interest.

Observations, Themes and Tips

A pod in front of Stonehenge - before the start

Paintings without People

"There's so many people!"

"there are thousands of visitors" observations about the venue

Ben MacGregor in his pod painting the Stones
with many, many people between him and Stonehenge

Just like last year, they took them to a very busy place with people passing by the whole time - and the artists then produced three paintings which were totally without people!!

Which is more than a bit odd when you think about it!

Maybe one of the challenges - maybe for the semi final - could be of a totally "regular place" in the landscape, with people - and they MUST include some people??

Just a thought.

(My favourite substitute Judge, Pete Brown does it all the time with his streetscene (in various places - including London) and Glastonbury paintings!)

An OBSESSION with Man Made Structures

Yet again, the programme's total OBSESSION with man made structures came to the fore.

I get that they needed to find somewhere iconic for the 10th series - and Stonehenge is pretty iconic as well as very megalithic.

However it really did NOT have to involve a manmade structure. There are plenty of iconic views around the UK which do not involve manmade structures.

I'm very sure we can all think of more than a few - for example, here's 10 of them:

any of the lakes in the Lake District
any of the hills in the Lake District
any of the glens in Scotland
any of the islands off the coast of Scotland
the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland - if you really need to have a wierd structure
Durdle Door - on the coast of Dorset - yet another natural structure
Lulworth Cove - on the coast of Dorset
Cheddar Gorge
the Peak District National Park
Puzzlewood - in the Forest of Dean

Judges Criteria (Absence of)

Stephen Mangan and the Judges discussing paintings at "halftime"

The absence of very clear / explicit / agreed Judges criteria - to avoid them making it up on the spot, dependent on individual predilections and prejudices - was again evident.

Nobody was saying - in a manner consistent with every other episode and final - "what we are all looking for is...."

If they are then, there's some pretty poor editing and production values. You would never ever get away with it in any other competition - because it's just not fair to not state what's required.

Otherwise it's a lottery - and those are very strictly regulated. I'll return to this topic in the review of the series.

Last year I said this - and I standby it - and am repeating it again

In my view, it's absolutely critical that everything about the criteria used to judge the artists' work is based on statements made to the artists in the letter announcing they've got a place in the pods - and repeated for viewers in the first episode of each series i.e. the commission you are competing for is:
about (subject)
in (name of place)
we want you to use your paintings to tell stories about the places you see
So they all know what really matters!

Decision Time: Who's the winner?

In deciding on the winner, The Judges

first consider The Commissions
next review the painting from the four hour Final
finally look at the two paintings together - for each of the three artists in the Final

To my way of thinking, what really decides who wins the Final are the commissions of subjects of their own choice close to their home.

The Judges walk up to see the three commissions for the first time

The artists chose (left to right below)

Susan chose a pylon in a field on her family farm
Ben chose a view of a local lake surrounded by trees - in Walton on Thames (which looks to me from maps to be very much like Molesey Reservoirs Nature Reserve - because this has islands. Note this is NOT open to the public).
Kieran chose two trees in his garden - in Dublin

landscape artist of the year final - three commissions

Commission Artworks left to right by:
Susan Isaac, Ben MacGregot and Kieran Gurkian

This was the point at which I knew for certain who the winner was.

Never ever underestimate the painting which can be, if the artist so chooses, most like the commission the artist will be completing if they win the prize.

When you are submitting you have absolutely no idea what the prize will be. However you do know that the artwork which indicates that you capable of delivering a winning commission needs to be of a size which merits a commission valued at £10,000.

However, when you've made the final, one assumes that the artists have already been told what the prize is. If only because the Judges have been wittering on about the Impressionists at various points during the series.

So just as the submission painting can play be a very big influence on who wins the heat, the Commission Painting which artists do for the Final can play a very big part in the final outcome.

TIP: However your choice of topic and to some extent your colour palette can be decisive.

It was interesting to see that all three artists recognised the importance of this commission and ALL painted bigger. That said...

Ben's was clearly the largest
while Kieran's was a diptych made from his two normal supports used in portrait format and put together as a diptych to create a large landscape format.
whereas Susan's painting was a bit bigger than she'd been painting hiterto but was not what I'd call "big".

Why did I think I knew the winner? Well to me it was completely obvious:

The choice of subject matter by Susan was so remote from the landscape of the south of France to be almost "an own goal". I commented on Facebook that I was almost moved to say "A Pylon!" in my very best Lady Bracknell voice (as played by Dame Edith Evans). I also felt her colours were a very long way from what I knew from personal experience of painting in the south of France was a landscape where the colours are completely different to the UK.
The big question mark about Kieran has always related to his colour pallette. He loves and is very attached to his very muted browns and greens and has not departed from them at any point. I could not see any way the Judges were going to take the risk and "hope" that he might change his palette for the south of France. So again, this for me was an "own goal".

By way of contrast, Ben

painted a very much bigger painting than any of his previous paintings - demonstrating he could rise to commission scope and standards
chose to work in his preferred cyan blues and spring greens - which fitted very well with the lighter brighter colours used by the Impressionist/Post Impressionist artists of Monet, Cezanne and Van Gogh.
used his own particular way of mark-making in various ways which satisfied the Judges' criteria of wanting an artist who added a new language to those painting the south of France

Bottom line, he'd gone the extra mile and completely sold me on the case he made to be the winner!

The Final Paintings

"All three are very, very different" Kathleen Soriano

The latter interestingly were never ever looked at together as just Final Paintings. Almost as if they were the "also rans". The Commissions just overwhelmed the judging.....

The only time we saw them together was when the Artists were standing next to them waiting for the result. This again illustrated how big Ben's painting was relative to the others.

The lineup - in front of Stonehenge - with the Final Paintings for the result

The Final Decision

The Judges looked at the two paintings produced by each artist together. Below you can see the two paintings from each artist together with my comments - and those of the Judges.

Stephen Mangan commented on how large each of the commissions relative to their previous paintings in the competition.

Susan Isaac

Commission and Final paintings by Susan Isaac

I've not been a fan of Susan Isaac's style of painting all the way through - and I didn't change my mind in relation to her two final paintings. Although, overall, I thought her commission was probably her best painting during the series.

I did however notice that Susan seems to prefer to load the focus on the left side of her paintings. In her commission, the pylon as the focial point hits the "thirds" vertical on the left. In her Commission, her stones are loaded towards the left.

I'm also emphatically not a fan of her dark brooding skies - or her orange backgrounds.

I can well understand why there was a question from Stephen Mangan of ............................

I really didn't think her Final Painting was in any way her best painting.

Kieran Guckian

Commission and Final paintings by Kieran Guckian

My main issue is I can't get over how sombre Kieran's paintings are - in a very muted way.

Commission: Kieran's commission diptych works well both as two individual paintings of two different trees and as a "joined at the shelter" diptych. But it's just so very dark....

Final: For me the painting doesn't look in the least bit like Stonehenge because this tones are all far too dark. Which really makes me think his sense of correct tones is maybe off by a few shades.

PS Kieran - if you're reading this, do please go and get your eyesight checked for cataracts. How you are painting is very like paintings produced by artists with cataracts - where you can almost completely lose your sense of colour.

That said - he has the most marvellous natural sense for design and composition and both paintings worked really well in that respect. If he could just work a bit more colour into his work....

Ben MacGregor

Commission and Final paintings by Ben MacGregor

These two paintings just shout 'WINNER" at me.

I should also add that if you looked at most of my landscape art, you'd also see

a preponderance of sky blue and a variety of greens which always included an acid green. It's no coincidence, this carried over into the design palette for my blog! Just saying....
a woman who loves hatching - which is essentially what Ben is doing with his brush. These later paintings in the LAOTY series are much more about the hatching marks because he'd gone bigger and consequently there's much more space to create visual surface interest.

Commission: I loved the commission painting. It's one of those paintings which would give a lot of joy to just keep staring at all the different ways he made marks - and how these vary depending on whether he is painting trees or water.

Final: I liked that fact he didn't have time to go and redo the sky and had to leave it very simple. That's what it needed. I really liked the way he scrubbed the paint on to those lichen encrusted stones. They were the very much the most like the stones in reality - but at the same time gave a sense of them having been there a very, very long time - and of all the lichen growing on them.

He was the ONLY artist whose painting in the Final of essentially just the stones and the grass and the shadows shouts STONEHENGE without looking like it needs to be on a postcard.

Judges' Criteria

What criteria?

The Winner

The winner was Ben MacGregor.

Ben MacGregor's reaction to hearing he had won

I was very pleased and jumped out of my seat yelling "Yes". It had become very apparent to me over the course of the semi-finals, Commission and Final that he was "the one".

His paintings are also one of the very few occasions we've seen in the landscape final when all the paintings from beginning to end are self-evidently by the same artist using the same skills and techniques.

All of Ben's Paintings
(left to right)
Commission, Heat, Final, Semi-Final, Submission

My next two posts are about:

The Commission - the trip to the South of France followed by the unveiling at the Courtauld.
The series as a whole.

This Series to date

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

For all those interested in entering the series which will be filmed this summer (during June/July) and broadcast in early 2026

see my blog post about Call for Entries - Landscape Artist of the Year 2026 (Series 11). The deadline for submission is NOON on Friday 2nd May 2025 - and entries are ONLY accepted online.

Past Series - Reviews

You can also read past reviews of the Landscape Series of the Year which very many previous pod artists - and wildcards - have said they have found helpful.

See my Art on Television Page which:

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

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.

MAKING A MARK

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Monday, March 17, 2025

Ben MacGregor wins Landscape Artist of the Year 2025