Selected Artists and statistics - BP Portrait Award 2019

This post is about the artists behind the 44 portraits selected for the BP Portrait Award 2019 Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

The exhibition opens to the public on 13 June 2019 and admission is free (see details at the end).

Ruminating Man by Frances Bell

As always this post takes rather longer (hours and hours!) to write than usual and that's why it's being published today and not yesterday as indicated on Monday.

At the end there is a BIG TIP for those aspiring to enter in 2020 and beyond....

Selection Process

The competition is open to all artists aged 18 and over from around the world.

In 2019:

• 2,538 artists submitted a portrait as a digital image to the BP Portrait Award 2018. (2,667 artists in 2018)
• from 84 countries (minus 4 countries compared to 2018).
• Of these 290 (11%) made it through the first stage assessment and got to hand deliver or courier their actual portrait for viewing by the Judging Panel.
• Of these just 44 (1.7%) have been selected for this prestigious annual exhibition - which will be seen by more than 250,000 people

In terms of geography, out of the 44 selected artists from all over the world

• 20 portraits (45%) came from the UK - England, Scotland and Northern Ireland (52% in 2018) 
• 24 portraits (55%) came from 81 other countries (48% in 2018)

Key changes in statistics include

• a very significant reduction on the number (50+) which have been selected in the past (eg 55 portraits in 2012)
• a very significant reduction in the number of selected portraits by UK artists
• an apparently big increase in artists who have never had their work selected for the exhibition before

Effectively this means that over time, the number of UK artists being selected for this competition has more of less halved.  

It's now very much an international competition - not a UK one.

Selected Artists (and statistics)

Below are short profiles of the selected artists. Links in their names are to their websites. (Note that almost every artist has a website )

The artists are ordered according to 

• their country of origin and
• the number of artists that hail from each country highlighted

Artists are welcome to send me images of selected portraits and/or photos of them with their portrait - and they will be added into this post.

I'm still trying to work out the statistics. Below I've got one artist without a country (although I suspect it's Colombia) - and numbers that don't tie in with the press release. There seem to be more Americans and fewer Brits.

UK (19 artists)

England (15)

• Jane Beharrell - a painter of figures and still life. She's from Hull, but is now based in Beverley, East Yorkshire. First time in the BP.
• Frances Bell RP SWA (see her portrait at the top of this post) Facebook Page A full time professional portrait and landscape painter and elected a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2018 (and her work can be seen at the RP Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries from tomorrow). Born in Cambridge in 1983, and raised in Suffolk and now basw in Northumberland. Studied portraiture at the Charles. H. Cecil Studios in 2001 for 3 years, and then taught sporadically at the Charles Cecil studios for a further 7 summers. She has exhibited widely and internationally and won a number of prizes.  In 2019, one of her paintings was awarded a Certificate of Excellence from the Portrait Society of America in this years International competition.

Frances Bell with her portrait of Ruminating Man.

• Frances Borden - Won 2nd prize in 1998 - In 2019 selected for both the BP and the Ruth Borchard Portrait Prize. Studied art at Chelsea College of Art & Design - BA (Hons) Fine Art (Painting) (1993 to 1996). Regularly selected for exhibitions by other art competitions and previously selected for the BP Portrait Award in 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000,  and 2016  
• Simon Thomas Braiden - Born 1971. He's a self-taught artist who is a member of Manchester Academy of Fine Art. His work has been seen in exhibitions in Manchester, Buxton and London. self taught artist born in Manchester in 1971. Early Flemish painting and 20th Century Modern Realist painting have been his main influences. He has exhibited extensively throughout the UK in both private and public galleries. Previously selected in 2018 - when I interviewed him for BP Portrait Award 2018 - Artists with their paintings
• Bridget Cox - b. 1951. A practising artist currently living in Cumbria. Trained at the Carlisle College of Art and Design and the University of Ulster, Belfast BA(Hons) painting. Her paintings are in private and public collections in the UK, Ireland and France.  Her portrait titled ‘Chinese Cloth’ is of Hilary Linton of Brampton
• Vanessa Garwood - Born in Israel 1982, Vanessa studied painting and sculpture for three years at Charles Cecil Studios in Florence.  Now she lives and works in west London. Also selected for BP Portrait Award 2018 Facebook Page 
• Emma Hopkins - Shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award 2019 - see 40th BP Portrait Award (2019) Shortlist
• Tedi Lena - studied at CASS and successfully completed Undergraduate program in Fine Art and got my result 95%. July 2018 Awarded Degree of Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours London Metropolitan University. Painted Frank Bowling for the exhibition. Leading an Exhibition Tour on 28 June
• Jeff Midghall - Graduated with BA (Hons) Fine Art, Kent Institute of Art & Design, Canterbury, UK in 1997. Possibly based somewhere in France?

• Keith Milow - born 1945 in London, grew up in Baldock, Hertfordshire, lived in New York City and Amsterdam, now lives in London. He is an abstract sculptor, as well as a painter and printmaker.  (Note artwork online makes no sense in terms of portraiture!)
• Sarah Jane Moon - Sarah Jane comes from New Zealand and is a painter and printmaker who specialises in portraiture and figurative painting and explores identity, sexuality and gender presentation. In New Zealand she graduated in 2003 with BA - Art History, English Literature, Japanese Victoria University of Wellington and in 2007 BA (Hons) Visual Arts Theory University of Western Australia, Perth. After coming to the UK she studied for Diploma in Portrait Painting at The Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, UK (where she now teaches regularly). She has exhibited extensively and regularly been selected for the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

Dr Ronx by Sarah Jane Moon

40th BP Portrait Award (2019) Shortlist

The shortlist for the BP Portrait Portrait Award 2019 was announced last week. I'd been inspecting my inboxes for an email from the National Portrait Gallery and checking the NPG website on an almost daily basis for all of April to no avail.

I knew if I went away it would be announced - and so it came to pass!!

So - one week late - here's the Making A Mark analysis of this year's shortlisted portraits - and the artists who created them.

Four portraits shortlisted for 40th BP Portrait Award 

The portraits shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award 2019

• Sophie and Carla (1520mm x 920mm, oil on polyester) by Emma Hopkins
• Quo vadis? (900mm x 600mm, oil on aluminium) by Massimiliano Pironti
• The Crown (500mm x 400mm, oil on linen) by Carl-Martin Sandvold 
• Imara in her Winter Coat (1200mm x 900mm, oil on canvas) by Charlie Schaffer 

Interestingly we have:

• a completely new set of artists producing shortlisted portraits
• three of the artists entered for the first time this year
• four portraits all use a portrait format
• there are two small and two large portraits
• ALL artists painted in oil
• four different supports were used for the shortlisted portraits

Below there is a brief summary about the competition and then information about each of the artists

The BP Portrait Award 2019

The Open Entry

This year's open and international entry comprised 2,538 digital entries (minus 129 entries) from 84 countries (minus 4 countries).

Selected Artists

Only 44 portraits have been selected.  This is a very significant reduction on the number (50+) which have been selected in the past.

• 20 from the UK
• 24 from international artists

Effectively this means that over time, the number of UK artists being selected for this competition has halved.  It's now very much an international competition - not a UK one. I'll be publishing my blog post about selected artists on Wednesday.

If you want a small image of your portrait included in my post please send me an image.

The Judges were:

• Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director, National Portrait Gallery (Chair)
• Gaylene Gould - Head of Cinemas and Events at the BFI Southbank + Cultural Ambassador for London appointed by the Mayor
• GaryHume - artist (member of the YBAs and a painter but not known as a portrait artist)
• Dr. Alison Smith - Chief Curator of the National Portrait Gallery 
• Des Violaris - Director, UK Arts & Culture, BP and 
• Zoé Whitley - Senior Curator of the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London.

Exhibition and Awards 

The winner of the £35,000 BP Portrait Award and other award winners will be announced on 10th June 2019 at the National Portrait Gallery, London at the Awards Ceremony.

• First prize: £35,000 + a commission worth £7,000 (agreed between the National Portrait Gallery and the artist). 
• Second Prize: £12,000 and 
• Third Prize of £10,000 is also awarded. 
• The BP Young Artist Award, with a prize of £9,000 goes to one selected artist aged between 18 and 30. 

The exhibition will be held at:

• National Portrait Gallery - 13 June to 20 October 2019
• Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh - 7 December 2019 to 22 March 2020; and 
• Ulster Museum, Belfast - March to June 2020.

Artists shortlisted for BP Portrait Award 2019

Below you can find profiles for each of the shortlisted artists

Commission an artist: 'Home is where the Art Is' (Episodes 11-15)

This post is about 

• my overall conclusions about Home Is Where The Art Is 
• information and links about the artists participating in Episodes 11-15.

If you want to find out the details of artists who participated in the first two weeks see below for the links to previous posts.

In general, the series has been a real education in terms of the client's perspective. 

• Overall some of the artwork during the course of the series has been simply stunning and very professional. By way of contrast, some of it has been distinctly amateurish.  
• I've been amazed to find that both domestic and corporate clients can really like artwork which fails (from my perspective) to demonstrate any real skill or talent.  My view - and I'm entitled to it - is that what is considered to be quality art varies depending on your experience of looking at art and your perspective (likes and dislikes)
• I'm wondering how many other people are like me and ended up, over the series as a whole, quite bemused by some of the choices of both artists and artwork. 
• Notwithstanding commissions are always about personal choice and there is no right or wrong if it makes the client happy.

The process of looking for the links has also clearly demonstrated how vital marketing and social media is for selling art and commissions

• the extent to which some artists fail to design websites with commission clients in mind
• why some people can make an income from commissions. This seems to correlate strongly with being organised and/or better at marketing and/or social media and/or getting the artwork out and shown wherever - including on BBC1!

I also discovered a few things in the final week of Home Is Where The Art Is

• One enterprising artist who participated in the programme has set up a Home Is Where The Art Is Facebook Page to promote the work of those participating. However that's going to be a lot of help to those artists who participated without a website or Facebook Page. One wonders who people are intended to contact them....
• Next - some of the artists produced work for the commissions based on other work they had done previously. Now this is quite a common approach used by some artists - and one which is often used for clients who have a tight budget. However I'd hesitate before calling it "bespoke" unless it was unique in every respect and only available to that client. Of course it's quite different if the client requests "one like that but tailored to our preferences for colours / things which are important to us".

Finally - some other individuals have also documented the details. But my posts remain the most comprehensive! :) 

• below are website and social media links for the artists who participated in Episodes 11-15 in week 3
• contact details are embedded in the artist's name
• commissions details are provided if self evident

Commission an Artist (Episodes 11-15)

This is about the artists with a name in the end credits of Home Is Where the Art Is (Episodes 11-15). 

It follows on from my previous three posts

• Home Is Where the Art Is - needs a makeover! in which I highlighted
• my concern about the absence of any name credit in text in the programme
• explain why it should be mandatory that all participants who are professional artists get a named credit.
• my attempt to redress the balance in 
• Commission an artist: 'Home is where the Art Is' (Episodes 1-5) 
• Commission an artist: 'Home is where the Art Is' (Episodes 6-10)

Episode 11

Location: South Lake District
Commission: up to £500
Budget: a piece of art to celebrate their recent move, and in particular to thank their children
Media represented: metal sculpture; glass or watercolour painting
Outcome: BOTH pieces were bought

Both artists sold their commissioned artworks.

The Artists in Episode 11 were:

London Original Print Fair and A Buyer's Guide to Prints

Yesterday I went to the 34th London Original Print Fair at the Royal Academy of Arts. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for all those who like fine art prints. I've been in previous years and enjoy:

• the fact I can see fine art prints by leading artists past and present
• view a lot of work by people I've never seen before - and I always come away with new 'names of artists to follow'

This is an annual event around about this time of year at the RA - who have got a massive space for the exhibition and a lot of printmakers among their members.

Tickets are £12 (on the website0 and concessions are available.

• Half-price tickets for National Art Pass.
• RA Friends receive free entry.

The fair is on 25-28th April 2019 i.e. started on Thursday and is also on today and tomorrow (10am – 6pm). 

I took "himself" (free entry on my Friends card!) who declared he was very pleasantly surprised - and interested - and would have stayed much longer if he didn't have to go and catch a train for a prior commitment.

I came away with A Buyer's Guide to Prints by Helen Rosslyn (a prints and drawings specialist and a Director and the Organiser of the London Original Print Fair) which was published by the Royal Academy of Arts last September. It's got good explanations of all the various types of prints and technical terms plus useful notes on what to expect from a printmaker, how to frame them and answers to a number of frequently asked questions by actual and potential collectors of fine art prints.

All for £9.99 which makes it affordable as well as useful and accessible!

What does it look like

I've uploaded a bunch of photos to my Facebook Page - see London Original Print Fair 2019 - if you want to see the scale and nature of this art fair for printmakers and fine art print lovers. Below are a few of the pics I took.

Which artists can you see 

The printmaking artists being exhibited by the various stands at the fair include Brueghel, Cranach, Hogarth, Monet, Whistler, Picasso, Matisse, Francis Bacon, Barbara Hepworth, Roy Lichtenstein, Lucien Freud, Louise Bourgeois, Victor Pasmore - and more from the past.

Contemporary artists include: David Hockney, Grayson Perry, Peter Blake, Norman Ackroyd (everywhere!), Chris Orr, Paula Rego, Mick Rooney, David Shrigley, Anita Klein, Adam Dant et al.

Which galleries are exhibiting

This page on their website provide links to the explanations of each stand at the 2019 Fair.

The galleries which impressed me include:

Landscape Artist of the Year goes BIG!

Those of us who do not have Sky TV have been watching the Artist of the Year programmes on computers tablets and smartphones - in my case - an iMac and iPad Pro. Every time I wanted to watch it BIG I had to sit at my desk and watch it on my iMac.

BUT NO MORE

As of this afternoon, I am now looking forward to watching Landscape Artist of the Year on my television!

The Now TV Stick instruction leaflet

That's because this afternoon I collected my brand new FREE Now TV Stick from the Sorting Office and installed it - after a false start on my TV.

I've been recommending people who don't have Sky to watch via Now TV - and I'm now suggesting for those who have already subscribed to Now TV (Entertainment Pass)

• you also get hold of a Now TV Stick FOR FREE and 
• get it installed before Landscape Artist of the Year starts.

If you already have a Now TV account you probably got an email this month offering you the FREE Stick. All you have to do is find the email and then send off for it.

Then install it!

It works if you have a television with HDMI slots which is connected to the internet.

I found the instructions a little opaque but finally figured it out. However I thought I'd make a note of what I did - and then thought I might as well share it with others who will be doing the same. Hence this post.

After I'd checked I'd got HDMI slots free - this is where the iPhone comes in handy when you don't want to turn the TV round.

checking my HDMI slots via a photo!

My stick wouldn't work with the "plug into your TV's USB slot" but worked fine one when I used the cable to plug into the power plug instead to power it (little white light winks on the stick when it's plugged in and powered up).

Then I just went to the AV button and selected the HDMI slot it was plugged into - and off we went through the installation.

• First you have to pair your Now TV remote control with the TV - which seems to go pretty smoothly so long as you point it at the TV
• Then you have to make a connection with your wifi - first choose the correct wifi network to joint - and then insert the wifi password! (Latter was the longest bit of the whole process!)
• Next to get a connection to Now TV you must insert a code. The code will come up on the television screen - and then you need to go to www.nowtv.com/TV to insert it. Make sure you've logged into your Now TV account in order to put in the code. 
• Ignore the stuff about vouchers and passes if you already have one
• Then basically it's getting the stick updated with the various apps
• and before you know it you're starting at the normal Now TV screen on your television screen rather than your computer or tablet.