Art-iculate: BP Portrait Award 2011

A few weeks ago I popped down to the National Portrait Gallery to view the annual Portrait Prize sponsored by BP. I cannot believe it’s now over a year since I last viewed the nominees work and meet a lovely Elizabeth McDonald (who won the award for BP Young Artist), whom I subsequently interviewed for the Hub Magazine.

Distracted by Wim Heldens © Wim Heldens [1^st prize]

For 2011, as always there could only be three main winners, and of course the most exciting winner of them all; the BP Young Artist. In a record-breaking year for entries, the prestigious first prize was won by 57-year-old artist Wim Heldens, who has been exhibited twice before in the competition (2008 and 2010). Shortlisted for the first time this year, Heldens is proof that determination pays off. His winning portrait, Distracted, is a picture of a 25-year-old philosophy student, Jeroen whom the artist has painted 20 times at different stages of his life. Winning a grand prize of £25,000, Heldens will also be awarded a private commission at the National Portrait Gallery Trustees’ discretion, worth a further £4,000.

Heldens says: “I paint from intuition, always trying to paint that what touches me deepest, but being a painter who is more of a doer than a thinker, it is very hard for me to explain what I try to capture. As Edward Hopper says: ‘If you could say it in words, there would be no more reason to paint’... I paint what I ‘feel’ with my eyes and maybe it is for other people then to tell what I have captured”.

Holly by Louis Smith © Louis Smith [2^nd prize]

The second prize of a cool £8,000 went to Mancunian Louis Smith for Holly. Since studying scene painting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Smith has exhibited in Britain and Italy and at the 2009 BP Portrait Award. His eight-foot portrait shows a naked model called Holly hand-cuffed to a rock in a wild cave-like landscape. The Allegory of Prometheus is re-imagined in female form. Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. As punishment he was bound to a rock while an eagle ate his liver daily only for it to grow back to be eaten the next day. Holly looks into the eagle’s face with calm resilience, accepting her fate.

“It’s a message of composure in the face of adversity, something we can all draw strength from in our struggle to make a daily living!”, says the artist. The portrait has a huge gilt frame with a marble plaque at the base, inscribed with the name ‘Holly’. “It’s an extravagant attempt to illuminate the Baroque style”, says Smith.

Just to Feel Normal by Ian Cumberland © Ian Cumberland [3^rd prize]

Coming in third is Ian Cumberland for Just to Feel Normal, who took away a respectable £6,000 for his efforts. Living and working in County Down, Northern Ireland, since graduating in Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Ulster in 2006 Cumberland has had a solo exhibition at the Albermarle Gallery in London and has won several awards – also exhibiting in the BP Portrait Award in 2009.

His shortlisted portrait for 2011 is an enigmatic half-smiling head-and-shoulders study of a friend. ‘This is a painting of a friend whose story is like many others from my generation that have fallen victim to themselves and their preferred habits”, says Cumberland. “The title Just to feel Normal refers to his answer when asked why he continues along his chosen path.”

Mrs. Cerna by Sertan Saltan © Sertan Saltan [BP Young Artist Award]

For the fifth year of its existence, the BP Young Artist Award of £5,000 for the work of an entrant aged between 18 and 30 was awarded to Sertan Saltan for Mrs Cerna. Born in 1982 in Eskisehir, Turkey, Saltan now lives and works in Avon, Connecticut, where he is developing a studio. His sitter Mrs Cerna is the younger sister of a friend in New York City, who is caught glancing at the artist, almost menacingly, in her hair rollers and latex gloves sharpening a large knife.

“The contrast of knife, gloves and rollers brought both humour and horror to mind”, says Saltan. “The animated sharpening of the knives and thoughtful facial expressions were burned into my mind’s eye. I wanted to capture on canvas that moment which allows the viewer to meet this extraordinary woman and experience the richness and complexity of her preparation for Thanksgiving dinner.”

The BP Portrait Award 2011 and BP Travel Award 2010 will be displayed, free of charge at the National Portrait Gallery until 18 September.

BP PORTRAIT AWARD 2010

As has become tradition over the years, there are certain annual art dates in my calendar that never fail to get me excited. Think of the Turner Prize, The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, and of course the National Portrait Gallery’s Portrait Award, sponsored by current news headline holders BP, for whom 2010 marks their 21st year of endorsement, which by modern standards in business – is rather impressive.

The Portrait Award, now in its 31st year at the National Portrait Gallery, is a highly successful annual event aimed at encouraging artists to focus upon, and develop, the theme of painted portraiture within their work. After having its most successful year – receiving some 2,177 entries, with 1,496 of those being from the UK – the variety of skills and talents presented were second to none, with this being – what I believe to be – one of the strongest and toughest years to judge yet.

On Tuesday 22nd June the winners of the BP Portrait Award 2010 was announced. In first place was Daphne Todd who scooped a prize fund of £25,000 for her portrait, ‘Last Portrait of Mother’, a devotional study of her dead mother. If this wasn’t a great enough prize, the winner also receives a commission, at the National Portrait Gallery Trustees’ discretion, worth a further £4,000.

Before Todd’s mother passed away at the age of 100, she gave her daughter her permission to paint her after death, while her body awaited burial. Todd spent three days observing the subtle changes in her appearance before the body was embalmed, incorporating details such as her stomach expanding with gas into her emotive portrait.

“The body had its own beauty about it and was riveting to do.”

In second place came last year’s runner up, Michael Gaskell. Based in Leicester, interestingly Michael only got to know his sitter, Harry (whom his portrait is named after), when he agreed to sit for him after having seen Harry for the first time whilst he was out shopping with his family. Luckily for us Michael was persuaded to approach Harry by his wife. In the resulting portrait which was completed in a short burst of intense work over the winter of 2009-10, Gaskell tried to evoke a sense of what had drawn him to Harry, but he hopes that the image is also informed by what he gained from hearing about the sitter’s experiences and aspirations.

Coming in third this year is David Eichenberg who studied art at the University of Toledo in his home town. While he has exhibited throughout the United States, ‘Tom II’ is his first BP exhibited work. His portrait shows his friend, the sculptor Timothy A. Stover, seated at a metal bandsaw in the fabrication shop in which he works, located directly below the artist’s studio in an old warehouse in Toledo, Ohio.

In addition to the three main prizes awarded each year, there is also a special category for entrants under 25 named the Young Artist Award, which this year went to Elizabeth McDonald for her portrait entitled, ‘Don't Be Too Serious’. Elizabeth painted her portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Camillo Paravicini, in his studio in her home city of Glasgow. While they worked in the same building, in neighbouring studios, the two artists hardly knew each other.

She says while the clothing Camillo wears in the portrait – a black jacket and tie and black rimmed glasses – is similar to that which he would normally wear, his posture was staged to accentuate the tension between youth and maturity. “Through the sittings, and getting to know Camillo, I not only found myself examining his personal style but looking closer at other aspects of his personality. Perhaps most intriguingly, I began to see simultaneously the boy in the young man and the older professional gentleman the young man could become.”

Whilst they didn’t win any of the top prizes there were a few artists among the 58 exhibiting that I felt really deserved a mention:

Sentinel by Lyndsey Jameson

Inside Out (Clare with Claire) by Brian Shields

Quena by Eliot Haigh

Le Grand Natan by Daniel Enkaoua

Apostolado/ Apostolate by Rafael Rodriguez

58 portraits have been selected for the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which runs from 24 June until 19 September 2010.

Images courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery. From top to bottom: Last portrait of mother by Daphne Todd © Daphne Todd, Harry by Michael Gaskell © Michael Gaskell, Tim II by David Eichenberg © David Eichenberg, Don’t Be Too Serious by Elizabeth McDonald © Elizabeth McDonald, Sentinel by Lyndsey Jameson © Lyndsey Jameson, Quena by Eliot Haigh © Eliot Haigh, Le Grand Natan by Daniel Enkaoua © Daniel Enkaoua and Apostolado/ Apostolate by Rafael Rodriguez © Rafael Rodriguez.