Thursday, December 04, 2025

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

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Issues with the Sitter


Much as I like Brian Cox (the actor) and his acting, he would never ever have been my choice for a final. 

Why? Older people nap during the day. Particularly if they're doing nothing. It's as if those who book sitters have absolutely no awareness whatsoever of this very basic fact of life for those who are 70+. 

However, sit any 79 year old down and make them do nothing and - just like President Trump does - they have a distinct tendency to nod off. He could be heard muttering "keep awake, keep awake, keep awake" - but he didn't succeed.

People being shown asleep does not show them in a good light (few of us look good sleeping sitting up!). To my mind 
  • filming them asleep is ENORMOUSLY disrespectful to the sitter (Shame on you Sky Arts!)
  • choosing a sitter who might well be expected to nap during the sitting is enormously disrespectful to the artists - who need a sitter who can do a proper professional job!
It's as if their quest to find "a name" as a sitter, they've forgotten about the absolute basics!

Whoever thought a 79 year old rather rotund male with a very craggy face was a great sitter as a practice for a slim good-looking 41 year old female maths professor got it very  wrong!

There's a little bit of me that thinks there was some sort of monumental cockup by the people who book the sitters. If somebody had the bright idea of thinking Brian Cox, the physicist and the Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science would be a good practice run for the artists painting from life in the Final I would not have disagreed. Even if he is 57. However I think somebody might have got their Brian Coxes mixed up.....

Moreover two older people (c. 90 years old give or take) in quick succession isn't a great pathway to enabling artists to do their best. Not a lot of people paint older people - probably because they tend to fall asleep....

PS To all those perennially complaining about artists painting from devices, this is another reason why they use them. So they can paint from images of people sitting up straight with their eyes open, rather than slumped with their eyes closed!

One of these days the booking fees for the sitters for this programme are going to be incentive based with the maximum payout conditional on being a good sitter and keeping your eyes open throughout.

The Portrait Paintings


Many of those watching the series always seem to expect the Final to be decided on the basis of the quality of the painting produced while the actual Final is filmed. 

WRONG! This is not how it works.

There are three sets of paintings in the final
  • the self portrait submission and the paintings in the heat and semi-final (on the back wall) - ALL are relevant to the final result
The artists entering - next to the wall of previous paintings
  • the painting produced in four hours during the filming on Final Day and
  • the commission to paint somebody close to the artist - which they are all asked to produce after the semi-finals.
Here are the previous paintings of the three finalists

Previous paintings by Katie Jones

Previous prints and paintings by Chloe Barnes

Previous paintings by Lauren Ross

For me, the two that stood out, in terms of experience and expertise, were Katie and Chloe. Lauren is very promising though. My personal preference was for Katie.

The BIG TRUTH about the PAOTY Competition


The main thing - which I say repeatedly - is that THE MOST IMPORTANT PAINTINGS you do in this competition are the ones done without the cameras - with the Judges nowhere to be seen!
  • The Self Portrait submission - painted in your own time - and submitted as part of your entry to the competition - demonstrates:what you can do when not under a time pressure and
    • what you can create in a time budget you are comfortable with
    • and, potentially, how comfortable and proficient you are painting big.
  • The Commission Portrait - The Artists have four days to develop and complete their Commission Painting of a person close to them. This is done within a very limited time period as part of the final - but away from the television cameras (more or less). You need to record yourself painting the commission. This also demonstrates:
    • what you can do in a limited timescale - given very famous people whose portraits need painting often have a limited amount of time they can give to you
    • how big you can go when you have the time.
If anything, the painting in the Final is the less important than the two paintings at the very beginning and end of the sequence of five.

For example: I am absolutely convinced that
  • Lauren is in the Final because of her self portrait which was well considered and well painted. They knew in advance what she could do. She just needed to persuade them she could go bigger.
  • In my opinion, IF Katie Jones had painted much bigger paintings, for her self-portrait and commission paintings, we might have had a different outcome!

What the Judges learn from your paintings


The Heat Painting and the Semi Finals Paintings tell the Judges that:
  • you actually painted what you submitted as self portrait (i.e. there is a consistency of approach)
  • you know your way around design and composition, a given perspective on a sitter and tones and colours
  • you have sufficient artist "nous" that you are able to paint a decent portrait in less than four hours - even if it's only a head and even it it's maybe small.
The Final Painting and the Commission for the Final tell the Judges that:
  • you know how to raise your game - and invest time and effort in a portrait that makes them think you could be the one to do the £10,000 Commission
  • you can paint bigger.
Invariably, people paint bigger for the Final - because they know it's very unlikely that a small painting will win. So, if they've not done it before, they have time between the semi-final and the Final (when they're not painting the commission) to practice painting larger paintings in 4 hours. I've known some PAOTY WINNERS to paint a LOT of four hour portraits so that they are very confident of what they can and cannot do in the time slot.

In this instance we had the added twist that Chloe decided to do a monoprint for the final. So, into the room came a heavy printing press. (I think I've seen it before at the Woolwich Print Fair, where the people who make it show people how to make prints)

The Final Paintings


Here are the paintings produced in the final.

Katie Jones

Brian Cox with Katie Jones

Brian Cox just stood and stared and then commented 
This is truly extraordinary. It's excellent, I love what you've done. It's a beautiful painting.

Chloe Barnes


The BIG THING for Chloe is that she chose to do a high risk monoprint in the Final. Hence a printing press made an appearance in the room. 

Brian Cox with Chloe Barnes

He commented and gesticulated...
It's bold, amazing, extraordinary. It's atmospheric
I found the way Chloe first of all painted with etching ink - and then used rollers to fill in the background and solvents to remove ink and make introduce lighter tones and highlights to be fascinating.  Not to mention, pull a monoprint in the final of a very public art competition!!! Now wonder she got a round of applause when she pulled it off - literally and figuratively!

I should think there are going to be a fair few trying to mimic her approach in future.

Lauren Ross


Brian Cox with Lauren Ross and her portrait of him.

Kathleen was worried about Lauren and time, given she had chosen to go bigger. Lauren was also finding the time pressure stressful. In the end, what happened was that her painting was much less refined and it contained fewer objects acting as symbols in relation to, what Kathleen described as, her symbolist approach to painting portraits (as exemplified in her self portrait and commission portraits). Kathleen also described her as a colorist who likes to tell stories - and this also makes her different. However, she also said her portrait in the final lacked colour apart from the chair.

Who did the Sitter like best?


At the end, the sitter(s) get to decide which painting they'd like to take home.

Brian Cox by Katie Jones.

Brian Cox was very obviously very taken with the painting produced by Katie Jones - and he chose to take this one home. 

I knew he would. You cannot mask a genuine connection between sitter and artwork.

This is what Katie had to say on the subject.....


The "Commission" Paintings


The Judges were very impressed with the commission paintings.

The three artists had a week inbetween the semi finals and the final to produce their commission painting. Not a situation where you want to be deciding who to paint after you know that you've got to the Final!
  • Chloe painted her housemate and best friend Matt who she had known for a year - in her sitting room - and then out the plate through an etching press and produced a monotype print
  • Katie painted her two daughters (aged 18 and 15) as a diptych
  • Lauren painted her best friend Cerys - who is also an artist - while she is sketching and loaded it with narrative.
There were short films of them life drawing. That suggested to me that Katie was by far the best and most accurate draughtsman, Chloe created very painterly sketches and Lauren illustrated how dependent she is on a digital image. However in relation to the portraits produced, Lauren went a LOT bigger for "the big ask"!

The Final Commission Portraits
Left to right: Chloe, Katie and Lauren
"all of our work is so very different" Chloe Barnes
For me, Chloe was the out and out winner of this round. Once I'd seen her commission portrait I knew she'd win. That's because - as I indicated earlier - the self portrait and the commission portrait the very best indicators of what somebody can deliver for a £10,000 commission
  • how big they can go
  • how sophisticated they can be with their approach to the portrait.
Her commission was a very painterly monotype, which was well observed and incorporated abstracted images too.


The Winner of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025


Final and Commission Paintings by PAOTY 2025 Finalists
(left to right) Chloe Barnes, Katie Jones and Lauren Ross
Not one of them has under-delivered. They've all over-delivered. Kate Bryan
For me, there were two people who were seriously in the running - Katie and Chloe. By the end of the programme I was happy for either to win.
  • Katie won the Final Painting round - Brian chose her painting to take home
  • Chloe won the Commission Painting Round
Lauren is still a very good artist - but she is not as good as the other two.

Waiting to hear who is Portrait Artist of the Year 2025
(left to right) Katie Jones, Chloe Barnes and Lauren Ross

The winner was Chloe Barnes - who is the very first printmaker to win PAOTY.

Chloe's PAOTY Portrait Paintings
(left to right: heat (Clara Amfo); Commission for Final (Her housemate)
Final (Brian Cox); self portrait submission; Semi Final (Dame Mary Berry);

Yet again we have people who watch the Final and do not understand that the judgement is NOT on the Final Painting alone.

Basically the one that looks nothing like the sitter has won....again! comment on Facebook

See above for why such a comment just exposes the person who made it as NOT UNDERSTANDING how the competition works. 

Here's why I think Chloe won
  • she's a printmaker - so that's different
  • she's extremely skilled at moving the etching ink around on the aluminium plate
  • she produced a large self portrait - as a monoprint - and also did her upper torso (minus hands)
  • in the heat she painted with etching ink on aluminium  - which was impressive. Nobody has done that before
  • she went a LOT bigger still for the final
  • her commission monoprint was outstanding in term of the tonal control and the variety of mark-making.
The Judges loved the mark-making on her monochrome commission portrait.  Kate liked the way she pushed her abstraction and risk-taking to a new level.

Overall I got the impression of somebody who is capable of 
  • producing good portraits AND 
  • being brave enough to try new things, take risks and generally to advance her practice in a technical sense. 
  • being very prepared to "go big or go home"!!
That makes her artwork and her as an artist "stand out from the pack" - which is what you need to succeed.

To me that also means somebody who will go the extra mile for a major commission portrait valued at £10K. 

Here's why I think Katie did not win - essentially, given her painting was impressive, it was all about the SIZE of her support.
  • Katie did not go big with her self portrait. Maybe she never ever "goes big"? But she could have gone a lot bigger than she did 
  • She only did a small head in the heat - which is fine but you've got to very good to impress when you only do "just a head" - which she did!
  • She created a fine painting of Dame Mary Berry and Freddie - but again, it was essentially "just a head". It was bigger - but maybe not big enough.
  • She did a diptych of her two daughters for her final commission - but to me they looked somewhat illustrative and "saccharine" was the word that came to my mind when I saw them with the flowers (and I love flowers!). It didn't spell out "maths professor" and "Royal Society". Again the size was fairly constrained. However Tai found the painting of the hands of both daughters to be exquisite.
  • The final portrait and the commission diptych were all painted on the same size panel - which in turn was bigger than the panels she'd used earlier. i.e. bigger - but NOT very big. I think essentially she chose to stick with a size which she knew she could use effectively in the Final.
  • I knew she'd lost as soon as I saw the size of the etching plate Chloe put on her easel. Chloe meant business.
I can't remember what size the Ampersand Gessobord panels are - so I checked - and these wonderful panels go up to 48" x 72". Basically Katie chose not to go bigger for the commission. Which means, to me, she chose not to win.

I want to make it very clear that I like the way Katie paints a LOT and I think she is an excellent portrait artist. I'm very, very sure she will pick up a lot of commissions as a result of this programme. I look forward to seeing her submit her artwork to some of the national art societies as she should seriously be exhibiting her artwork outside Somerset.

PS. Who spotted the 2025 Landscape Artist of the Year in the audience?

PPS Next post is about the Winner's Story and the Commission - which will not be published tomorrow as I'm at a Christmas lunch! Look out for it on Sunday....

Reviews & Learning Points (PAOTY Series 5-12)


Series 12 of PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Autumn 2025)


    Series 11 of PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Autumn 2024)


    Series 10 of PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Autumn 2023)


    Series 9 of PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Autumn 2022)

    Series 8 of PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Autumn 2021)

    Series 7 of PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Autumn 2020)

    Series 6 of PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Spring 2020)

    Not quite sure why the post about the final is missing.... must have been something to do with Covid....

    Series 4 of PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Winter / Spring 2018)

    PLUS if you want to find out more.....


    Posted by Making A Mark on Thursday, December 04, 2025
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