Sky Arts Landscape Artist Of The Year 2021- Part 1 (Before...)

'Empty Streets', oil on canvas, 50 x 40cms, 2020

My selected entry to Landscape Artist Of The Year 2021

 Happy New Year. I can finally tell you about my participation last August as a contestant in Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2021, which started a new series this week on Wednesday the 13th January at 8pm. Up until now, as a condition of taking part, you are understandably not allowed to share anything about the programme on any social media platforms in case you spoil the result. I’ve been given the nod to share stuff about it now, but still can’t obviously share the result or my artwork from the day, but I thought it might be interesting to write about my ‘before and after’ experience. With this in mind this is the first of two posts- the ‘before’. A few friends know about my participation, but only a small handful know how I actually got on. 

For those that don’t know about the competition and have not seen it, it follows a similar format to it’s sister programme ‘Portrait Artist of the Year’ which has just finished it’s current run. Both series are presented by Dame Joan Bakewell and actor Stephen Mangan. Each weekly heat features six professional or amateur artists selected to compete from the thousands that apply by sending in a landscape painting (or drawing or print) and a short statement about their piece, the most interesting of which are then selected by the show’s judges and you are invited to take part. The show’s judges are highly respected and experienced curator’s Kathleen Soriano and Kate Bryan (look them up- what amazing CV’s!) and the rather brilliant painter Tai Shan Schierenberg. The artists then have to turn up at a given location (the specifics of which I was only told a few days before to avoid any cheating or practising beforehand) to set up in a ‘pod’- a small stage with easel, table, even materials if you need them, and a much needed roof-for each artist and in just four hours complete a ‘plein air’ artwork from a 180 degree view of the landscape in front of them. Working nearby are also 50 ‘Wild Card’ artists also invited along from the entrants but who didn’t quite make the competing six, one of whom from the six heats is invited to compete in the semi-final. At the end of the four hours the finished artworks are judged, a top three selected, and then from this an overall winner who progresses to the semi-final. So it was strange having spent much of the first few months of lockdown really enjoying watching both recent series away from the horrors outside in the Covid world, to be contacted by the show to be told the judges loved my own entry for this year’s competition and can I take part?!  Strange, but also incredibly exciting and gratifying. It felt like a real achievement to just get selected. For once, I felt quite proud, a feeling I never carry very easily.

'En Plein Air'

The painting that had been selected was, I think, a very unusual one, ‘Empty Streets’, and features at the top of this post. It is a painting of a bus stop near my Birmingham home based on a photograph taken on my phone on the way home the day I was sent home from work, as a college lecturer, last March and all schools and colleges were ordered to close as the pandemic took hold. It was an anxious and worrying moment in time, and the empty illuminated digital hoarding screen on the bus stop attracted me as it appeared like some sort of portal, gateway or door to a parallel reality to the familiar world I knew. If only I knew now ten months later. I painted the painting that night and always felt there was something about it that was hard to pin down but I thought was good. I eventually sent it to the competition thinking this a couple of months later, but also wrote about its relation to the pandemic in my statement. I wonder if this also caught the judges eye, because after all I think a landscape painting should have the power to conjure up or reflect the circumstances in which it was made. 

Working on location....

After the initial excitement I thought I’d better do some serious training for the competition, because as much as see myself as a landscape painter I don’t create my paintings ‘plein air’- although I do occasionally make such studies, but that’s all they are- my paintings are very much studio creations developed from many different approaches and, from my experience of watching the show I would be competing against some serious professional and experienced ‘plein air’ painters. And to make a painting in four hours? Well, many of my paintings are actually created in less time than that as they are very pared down and I often find myself overdoing it when I work too long on a painting. How to retain the qualities that mark my own work out and not make a poor attempt at trying to compete with the plein air artists and do something that retains some vitality in four hours, these were the questions that, with the Rocky soundtrack in my ears, I considered as I set to work. I had six weeks before I went in mid-August. I must say it was an exciting distraction from the pandemic and the months I had spent in lockdown. 

Many of the locations, though not all, are often on country estates in parts of rural England and when I was told I would be painting at an as yet unspecified location in High Wycombe I of course googled the area. I thought the most likely place would be a large National Trust estate called West Wycombe Park or possibly an airfield nearby. I was hoping for the airfield! But either way I knew that, unlike my paintings set in the urban West Midland edgelands at night, I would be painting scenery that would be very unlike anything I was used to painting and in the daytime too. With this in mind I spent time in the studio making small studies based on photographs I had been taking on my lockdown walks in local green spaces such as woods and fields trying to build up a painting vocabulary for painting such things that felt my own. The studies were also influenced initially by favourite artists I often lean on such as Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, Fairfield Porter, Diebenkorn and De Kooning, as well as Daubigny and Morandi. I also watched lots of youtube videos by ‘landscape’ artists to gain some useful technical tips, especially about mixing suitable colours for painting terrain, but soon got bored of this. Much of it seemed as far away from my idea of painting as it could possibly be and quite depressing. 

...at RAF Cosford Museum, Telford

The most useful work I did was actually going out and working on location but this also took some refining as it was quite hard to find suitable locations that ticked the boxes of where I may find myself painting in the competition. Plus the practical considerations of working more seriously ‘en plein air’, such as organising and carrying your equipment, setting up, what size to work on and discovering how long I needed to work. Could I do it in four hours? I had a few false starts working on small panels at Edgbaston Reservoir, which I didn’t like, before taking a bigger canvas and working in a small cemetery overlooking a very old church on top of a hill with tremendous views over the Worcestershire countryside. I would have been happy to just paint the view but I felt tackling the church would be important. This went ok, but after 2 hours tops I was done. 

Next I went to RAF Cosford of all places, the magnificent airforce museum near Telford, and set up in the grounds there to paint a large plane and hangar. Rather typically it turns out a society of artists that specialised in painting aeroplanes was having a conference there that day! In my experience these sorts of artists are not only technically proficient in a way that I could not hope to be, but also incredibly particular about detail, but when one of them eventually wandered over to me, which I was dreading, he was very complimentary about my rough looking painting. Another passer-by started talking about that ‘artist on the telly, very good he is, can’t remember his name…’ ‘Bob Ross’ I said tersely as I knew it would be Bob Ross. ‘That’s him. Does great clouds…’ My clouds weren’t looking very good. I went home- this time after 2 ½ hours-having a crisis about clouds realising that I hadn’t actually in 30 years of painting really painting them. I looked at the work of some of my favourite contemporary landscape paintings and oddly realised that they never did too. You’ll never see a cloud in a George Shaw landscape. I spent the next few days practising nothing but clouds very badly. I eventually ended up with ‘Skatepark’. 

'Skatepark', oil on canvas, 50 x 75cms, 2020

In between all this there were lots of contracts and disclaimers to sign, a telephone interview ‘all about me’ with the show’s producer- which was very enjoyable, and a timetable for the day sent through (though still no confirmation of the venue), as well as someone arriving from the ‘art team’ picking my submission painting up to take to the production. The show’s production team were incredibly helpful and friendly, and in all my experiences of working in the artist-run and publicly funded realm of exhibitions, which has been such a slog over the years having to chase after everything, it was great to be treated so nicely but also so professionally as an artist, as if you really mattered and were actually the artist by the way. 

Finally, a few days before I went to the competition I went up to my friend Liz’s farm and worked in a field there next to a lake by a house with a great reflection in the water. This painting was by far the best and biggest one- 75 x 50cms- I had made so far under these conditions and it took me just over 3 hours. I was beginning to feel more prepared, and after much consideration I decided to take a bit of a gamble and take the biggest canvas I was allowed at 120 x 100cms, knowing that I am more comfortable working big, and also this would suit the timescale. I did buy two of them though. By this point I had also invested in quite a large toolbox on wheels to carry my large tubes of paint, the countless brushes I use, and my bottles of medium, palette, easel etc. ‘Plein Air’ painting is meant to be more portable with the artist travelling light with his pachode box, but not me. I prefer to follow David Hockney’s example, but without all the personal assistants! 

...working at Liz's Farm (thanks Liz!)

I felt that all this preparation had been important, but I did feel, and you might share this view too on reading this, that I had got to a point where I was overthinking it all. It was a big deal for me though. Painting is the only thing I feel I'm pretty good at in my life. It’s a chance to get some important exposure as an artist and take part in a big competition where the winner is awarded a prestigious £10,000 commission. It also seemed conversely a risky thing to be doing in case you made the worst painting you have ever made in front of an enormous TV audience. A couple of days before I was due to take part it was confirmed that we would indeed be working at West Wycombe Park and would be required on set at 7am until 7pm. The afternoon before I headed off with all my gear in the car to a travelodge in High Wycombe where I would be spending the night with just me and my nervous thoughts. It felt like I was heading off to battle...