This year, I massively stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to apply for Sky Portrait Artist of the Year for the first time. My self portrait above got me through to the final heat stages. Painting with a four hour gun to your head in an open space with a live audience, judges, camera crew and no control over who your sitter is is an extremely unnatural painting environment for me but StoryVault Production team are a well oiled machine and do their utmost to make it work for the Artists.
So why enter after actively avoiding this scenario for so many years? I wanted to push myself this year, experiment with speed painting and watch for any happy accidents or techniques that I might want to apply to my style of painting. In terms of the show, I had zero expectations. As we all know, art is subjective. That is why it is so wonderful and there is space for everyone. I went in hoping to finish something that I didn’t want to immediately burn. And I achieved that. So all in all, I think the whole thing was a positive experience.