BP Portrait Award Exhibition 2011

DATE: 16th July 2011

LOCATION: National Portrait Gallery, London

EXHIBITION: BP Portrait Award 2011


Inspiring vs Frustrating



Once again we (Mum & I) have visited this wonderful Painting ‘competition’ winners exhibition.

Once again, as in previous years I come away feeling a strange combination of Inspiration and Frustration.

Can’t say as I was particularly impressed with the 1st, 2nd & 3rd placed winners - as once again, ‘super-realism’ will out - although at the 1st place winner was slightly less ‘painted from photograph’ and was done by a self-taught artist - hope for us all yet!

This year contained a surprising large number of ‘self-portraits’ - which I found refreshing - as these seemed more ‘painterly’, (I’m getting rather fed up with the blub on the wall quoting the artists as saying “...I saw my friend like this a quickly sketched them there and then...”....no you didn’t, you may have quickly photographed them, but you didn’t sketch them, the light and focusing in the painting clearly points to painting a photograph.

The ‘self-portraitists’ tend not to do this...at least, it is less obvious.

Beginning to spot work by artists who have previously exhibited before, especially Tim Okamura whose work adorns the front cover of the promo leaflet. He’s been present in at least the last 3 BP Portrait award exhibitions - very ‘painterly’, very lovely.

Again, one day, in the future, I will attempt to at least enter this competition - hahah Mum even hinted that she would like to be my sitter!!! (thats never happened before!)

Can't see the wood for the tree's....

I've been working on this for some time now, but I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. I'm finding it so difficult to fit 'art' time in while I'm working full time, but I need to work to pay bills (who doesn't?!). This has been the first weekend in ages where I've had nothing on and I've been looking forward to playing in the studio so much that its ridiculous! - I even put off two people/two events, so that I could 'play' to my hearts content. The trouble is, I found that now that I had the whole weekend off to do artwork, I found it very difficult to 'settle' into anything. Hence feeling like I can't see the wood for the tree's - pun intended - when it comes to this painting.

I've called it quits on the bottom half for the time being and now want to concentrate more on the 'tree' section, however, I'm finding this so difficult. Paint has been applied, removed, applied and removed again, and still I'm struggling. I found a new button on my camera (that I've only had 3 years!!!) and discovered that I can take time lapse photography, I tried this out, and I'm very impressed with the results. Its given me the opportunity to see how I work, the areas I concentrate on, how I move (or not) around the canvas and watching this back and then sitting back and looking at the actual painting (abit like 'crits' at college) has highlighted areas that I thought I'd finished with and are glaringly 'weak'.

Its a technique I shall use again. If only I could get to a happy place with this painting...maybe I should've tackled something smaller...??? But, I'm confident I will pull this off and it will look spectacular once its hung....and if I'm still working/find a new job in 30 days time, then I may even fork out to get it professionally framed....maybe.... :-)

Weekend off...

I've got round to having a weekend off - the first in months (although its only the Saturday) - so, as a treat I decided to play with the pencils, and the watercolour paints, and a biro....