MAKING A MARK: Portrait Award 2026 - Artists with their paintings (Self Portraits)

Sunday, August 02, 2026

Portrait Award 2026 - Artists with their paintings (Self Portraits)

"Self Portraits is my third category of portraits seen at the at the HSFK Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

This is always a very popular category - but you have to do something different to get noticed!

Other posts are:

Portraits of Children (and Parents)
Portraits of Older People
Self Portraits - this post

COMING SOON: to be published

Portraits of Women
Portraits of Men
Portraits of Groups

As I have previously stated, one of the purposes of this NEW APPROACH is to enable artists intending to apply next year to look at what got selected this year in relation to one of these groups.

You get to check out size, style and levels of proficiency - and how they frame!

This year, in this category we have:

2 men and 4 women
3 UK artists and 3 International Artists
women appear to be less afraid of hands - from a variety of perspectives
most portraits are head, shoulders and hands with just one fully body self portrait

I'm also posting larger images os some of the portraits to my Making A Mark Facebook Page with shorter profiles.

All my photographs were taken at the Private View and Press View associated with the opening of the exhibition back in June.

Self Portraits

Remigijus Gataveckas

Genealogical Deformation (2025)
Oil and mixed media on canvas
© Remigijus Gataveckas

The portrait plays with distortions in space and degrees of resolution. Visible traces of the process by which paint has been applied, scraped away and reapplied make the image appear active.

Algirdas and Remigijus Gataveckas (Instagram) are identical twins and First time exhibitors.

They were born in 1985 in Alytus, had a difficult childhood spent at the Alytus state orphanage (1993-2004) and now live in Vilnius.

The identical twins form an inseparable creative duo - and the portrait is a self portrait of the twins. (Don't ask me which is which!)

Algirdas Gataveckas studied

at Alytus Art School and earned a Bachelor's (2004-2008) and
a Master's (2008-2010) in monumental art (fresco-mosaic) at the Vilnius Academy of Arts.
He's recently been awarded a Doctor of Arts (fine arts).

Known for their hyperrealistic large-scale colored-pencil drawings and their socially engaged murals, the Gataveckas brothers tackle themes such as child abandonment, poverty and family memory.

Growing up in a children’s home was not a distant biographical background. It was a daily reality that shaped how we think, work, and relate to others. From this experience comes our focus on time, attention, and the relationship between the one who depicts and the one who is depicted.

Many of our works demand slow, uncomfortable looking. This responds directly to the emotional absence and institutional coldness we experienced as children. We want to create situations where the image cannot be quickly consumed. The viewer is asked to stay (Interview)

Their work has been seen in exhibitions including Figurativas at MEAM Barcelona (2025) and Why Is It So Hard to Love?, at MO Museum, Vilnius (2020).
In 2019 they were invited to paint the official portrait of the President of the Republic of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite and, in 2017, received Medals of the Order of Merit for Lithuania.

The Gallery Label says this about the artwork

Visceral and compulsive, the raised texture of this canvas is sculptural, making the surface of the painting key to understanding its meaning. The product of a collaboration between identical twins Algirdas and Remigijus, who after a difficult childhood lived in an orphanage in the Lithuanian city of Alytus, the work is an examination of 'inherited experience and relational dynamics'. The portrait plays with distortions in space and degrees of resolution. Visible traces of the process by which paint has been applied, scraped away and reapplied make the image appear active.

Hannah George

Mummy needs a break
Acrylic on Board, 2026
© Hannah George

Hannah George-Long (Instagram) - b.1988, she works as Senior Talent & Community Manager @ Hermès. She undertook a BA (Hons) degree in fashion, media and promotion at Huddersfield University but is self-taught in relation to art. and is an artist on the weekend. Her work has been seen in the Royal Academy of Arts' Summer Exhibition in 2021 and in group exhibitions in London - but not, as yet, on a website!

However her portrait got to be on a poster on the Underground - specifically Platform 5, Westbound Central Line, Liverpool Street station

I could have included this in the "Children and Parents" category.

The label says

Closely cropped, this inventive self-portrait offers an intimate window into the complex emotions experienced by a mother, sixmonths postpartum. The composition, in which Hannah George dramatically casts her hand across her face, is vulnerable pressing her eyes shut as she navigates a significant transition.

"The distortion of my face reflects how unfamiliar I felt in my own body, caught between who I was and who I was becoming. Through this altered perspective, the work became a way to explore a different view of myself."

"Mummy needs a break" by Hannah George

on Platform 5, Westbound Central Line, Liverpool Street station

TIP: One of the major bonuses of this art competition is if your painting gets chosen for the postcards (sold at the Gallery) or the advertising posters hung around London - with a lot on the underground.

Karin Neijenhuis

Useless, Part II, 2024 by Karin Neijenhuis
oil on linen, 60 x 60cm
© Karin Neijenhuis

Karin Neijenhuis is a Dutch artist and one of the many international artists who enter this competitiom. She was born 1974 in Breda in the Netherlands, where she still lives. She studied applied sciences at the University of Breda. In terms of art

Her focus is on portraits. She primarily paints portraits in oil on canvas or panel.
Her work is realistic, often colorful, and narrative in nature.
She draws her inspiration from everyday life - her own and that of those around her.
She likes to expose those parts of daily life which others would like to hide!

Her self portrait is described as "Domestic Drama as its finest". I particularly admire the design and composition with the viewer looking up past the underside of the ironing board - which is incidentally imacculately painted!

I'd recommend taking a look at her other self-portraits on her website

Her work has been seen in group exhibitions including

the Dutch Portrait Award (2021, 2023),
the Almenara Art Prize, Spain (2023, 2024, 2025) and was
a finalist in the Figurative Art Amsterdam Award, 2025.

(For the record, I gave up ironing years ago after I discovered that a 1600 spin speed, a jolly good shake and the use of a hanger for drying makes most creases drop out!)

Caroline Pool

Dark Passenger

Oil on canvas, 2024

40 x 30cm

Caroline Pool (Instagram) b.1985 she grew up in Bangkok, Thailand before moving to England. She now lives who now lives and works in South Shropshire. Her art education comrpises

foundation studies at Central St Martins, London,
followed by a BA (Hons) degree in illustration at the University of Brighton.

She is now a a multi-award winning Artist. Her work has been seen in numerous group shows including the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts, the Society of Women Artists, the Discerning Eye and the Royal Society of British Artists. More recently, she has participated in this year's series of Extraordinary Artists

The gallery label says

Intensity reverberates through this self-portrait, from the flexed arm to the steadfast stare beyond the picture plane. In this unusual work, Caroline Pool is off centre. Instead, the shiny, wrinkly texture of her oversized green jacket consumes the canvas and sitter, offset by an orange woolly beanie. Pool holds the coat over her chin, drawing further attention to her unblinking gaze outward, her defensive stance suggesting the focus of this portrait is beyond what we can see. 'There's an element of metaphorically standing on a precipice', the artist says, with past shadows cast whilst also staring into the abyss to start something new.

TIP: SMALL PORTRAITS - Size and Framing

The Support is slightly bigger than a sheet of A4. The head and hand only is probably no bigger than 10% of the total support which is 40x30cm. The main area of interest is maybe no more than 20% of the support

This means if you are going to paint small you need to be very confident and experienced in your technique. Going smaller is never easy. In some ways it's far more difficult that painting life size.

Frames are VERY important for small paintings. You can kill a small painting stone dead by choosing the wrong frame. This frame is what I would call "masterful restraint" It does the job and complements the colours but in no way does it overpower the portrait

Anji Richards

Red shoes,

Acrylic on canvas, 2026

61 x 76.3cm unframed

Anji Richards (Instagram) has entered twice before, once in 2022 when she did not get shortlisted and this year - when she was.

Born in 1967, she gained an HND in fashion design from the London College of

Fashion and a National Diploma in fine art from Central Saint Martins. Her work has

been seen in solo exhibitions in the Tate Library and Chelsea Arts Club, and in group exhibitions at the Mall Gallery, Bristol Art Gallery and the Camberwell Arts Festival.

Red Shoes explores the longstanding evolution of Black style through dandyism - a rebellious fashion movement formative of Black identities and rooted in resistance across African diasporas in Europe and the Americas.

Anji Richards inserts herself into this complex, longstanding history as a
female dandy, boldly pairing a tailored suit with red platform heels, gazing outward in quiet defiance. Taking inspiration from the 2025 Met Gala Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, she painted this self-portrait from photographs taken by her husband, settling on this seated pose as the most dynamic composition.

TIP BOLD COLOUR

Never ever be afraid to use bold colour. Just be careful not to use so much in such a way that it hurts our eyes. I love colour, but go OTT r use it in an inexperienced way and I can't look at your painting - and you won't be getting any comments from me beyond "Ouch!"

Angie gets it just right.

Ran You

North Wind

Acrylic on canvas, 2026

50 × 60 cm

Ran You (Instagram) was born in Beijing, China, in 1991.

Graduated with a BA degree in oil painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Now lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

His works have been seen in institutions including the Today Art Museum and the National Exhibition Centre of China National Academy of Painting, both in Beijing, and Group Global 3000, Berlin.

North Wind depicts Ran You and his partner against the backdrop of a snowy,

mountainous landscape. He is strongly influenced by Northern Renaissance paintings, and thus captures the psychological conditions that he and his partner, who is a composer of classical music, face as Chinese artists living in Europe.

The artist notes that

'set against a turbulent global political climate, the painting conveys a shared sense of pessimism, as if winter were approaching.'

also a very sage remark about his portraiture and this painting

To me, portraiture is not simply about presenting a face, but about making visible something beyond appearance — the presence of the human spirit. What matters is how a person bears the weight of their own existence — not merely in a psychological sense, but in a way that makes both reality and painting worth looking at.

REFERENCE: HSFK Portrait Award 2026

A LOT of artists have told me over the years - in the Private/Press Views - that they know who I am - "You're Making A Mark!" and have read a lot of my posts - and that in short is why I do them....

These are the posts I've published this year so far - there's more to come (in italics). You may think this is totally OTT. However this has been a very popular international art competition for very many years - and I think it's worth it!

to be published:

Portrait Award 2026 - Artists with their paintings (Women)
Portrait Award 2026 - Artists with their paintings (Men)
Portrait Award 2026 - Artists with their paintings (Couples and Groups)
Review of Portrait Award 2026: What's changed and what's not
Portrait Award 2026: The 10 portraits I liked the most

MAKING A MARK

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