Japanese Body Painting Artist

I was sent an image today by somebody who did NOT get their work selected for display in the BP Portrait Prize Exhibition 2016. (Those selected will be announced this week). Hello Katherine, Thanks for the consistently excellent reads.This year, I am one of the selected artists for the BP Portrait Prize who did not make it into the exhibition. I thought I'd send along an image of my piece, The

Last year, the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists was a pleasure to review (see Royal Society of British Artists 2015 - Annual Exhibition). It had well and truly bounced back from its nadir in 2012 (see see RBA 2012: An exhibition of Middle England?) This year's exhibition has 445 artworks in the main exhibition and 35 works in the NADFA's RBA Scholars exhibition and 20

I visited the annual exhibition of the Contemporary Watercolour Competition run by the Royal Watercolour Society on Friday.  The exhibition continues until 16th March at the Bankside Gallery (right next to Tate Modern and the River Thames on the South Bank. You can see a virtual exhibition here on the RWS website.  This has hugely improved in terms of the page of works, and each work also

This is the first of my blog posts about my interviews with 12 of the 13 botanical artists who won a Gold Medal at the 2016 RHS London Botanical Art Show at the end of last month (27-28 February 2016). Best Exhibit in RHS London Botanical Art Show (February 2016) Tillandsia by Mariko Aikawa The painting second from the left was bought by the RHS for the RHS Lindley Library. I've decided to

The £15,000 Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize for 2016 - and a Gold Medal - has been awarded to Henry Kondracki for his oil painting of The Cowgate - in the snow - by The Worshipful Company of Painter Stainers and the Lynn Foundation. This is a prestigious prize for original, two-dimensional works in any painting or drawing media. The prize has two aims: to encourage the very best creative

Once upon a time there was an initiative called Your Paintings. The aim was to digitise and provide a comprehensive online catalogue of all the oil paintings in public ownership in the UK. As yet it does not provide any record of the watercolours, sculpture, drawing and prints also held by public collections - more's the pity. For some reason the website for 'Your Paintings' was hosted by the

The exhibition of artwork by the 50 artists shortlisted for the Artist of the Year 2015 Prize sponsored by Artists and Illustrators Magazine opened yesterday at the Mall Galleries and is on display until the end of Saturday 27th February. The "Artist of the Year 2015" gets £1,000 in cash and gallery representation at Panter & Hall. You can see the rest of the prizes on offer on the competition

Van Gogh's Bedrooms is a very unusual exhibition opens in the Regenstein Hall of The Art Institute of Chicago today. It closes 10th May 2016. While most of us won't be able to see it in person, there are quite a few resources online which allow us to appreciate some of the effort which has gone into this exhibition. At the end of this post I've also listed my very extensive list of posts on this

The only channel on British television which does programmes about art and artists on a regular basis - using people who are credible commentators is the BBC. In other programmes about art that are educational and informative and not just "entertainment". It's one very big reason why the BBC must remain a public broadcaster and NOT become commercial. Art documentaries on BBCiPlayer So - what

The names of the artists and artwork selected for The Columbia Threadneedle Prize have been announced. You can find them below - along with some of the images of the artwork The last Threadneedle Prize awards Dinner - in the middle of the exhibition at the Mall Galleries You will recall I posted the The Columbia Threadneedle Prize - Call for Entries back in July. This week those who entered

ING Discerning Eye - exhibitions by Nicole Farhi and Larry Lamb. Yesterday I ventured out after a week of resting my frozen back and went to visit the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition at the Mall Galleries.... ...and got to meet Larry Lamb, one of this year's selectors and Tony Humphreys, the CEO of The Discerning Eye charity who were both chatting to a well known lady who I very much suspect

I've spent a delightful few hours recently putting together a page About Rory McEwen on my Botanical Art and Artists website. I'm going to develop a series of pages about various famous botanical artists. I started with Maria Sibylla Merian so decided to do a contemporary botanical artist next - and, of course Rory McEwen was the obvious one to do!  For those who don't know him, he's probably

The BBC is currently telling The Story of Scottish Art on BBC Scotland - but is not broadcasting this south of the border. However I've only just found out that , very sensobly, all the programmes are now available to all of us who can access BBC iPlayer. I haven't watched them all as yet but the little I've seen suggest they are all going to be fascinating. I'm 'flying blind' when it comes to

We visited Saffron Walden recently and discovered the Fry Art Gallery which is open from April to the end of October each year.  The gallery provides a home to artwork by artists known as the Great Bardfield Artists who are also the subject of a recent publication - Bawden, Ravilious and the Artists of Great Bardfield.  The book of the exhibition | V&A Publications On display at the

This year's Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Miniature Artists, Sculptors and Gravers has more than 600 works of art - in miniature.  All the works are less than 6" x 4" in size. The exhibition can be found in the North Gallery of the Mall Galleries and continues until Sunday 25th October. The exhibition is open each day from 10am to 5pm. It closes at 1pm on the final day. Admission is

Yesterday I visited the first day of the 28th exhibition of Sunday Times Watercolour Competition at the Mall Galleries. If you want to see the exhibition you need to make a date this week as the exhibition is only on until Saturday 19th September. It's open every day (10am until 5pm) and admission is free. Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2015 - Prizewinners Left to right: Left - Winner of

This is my second review of the watercolour exhibitions currently on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until Sunday 4th October. This one is devoted to Ruskin's Turners - and is a little later than planned. You can find out more about them below. However the important things to note is that there are very long intervals between exhibitions of these paintings. The last exhibition was

The prizewinners in the 2015 Sunday Times Watercolour Competition were announced earlier today. Akash Bhatt RWS RBA has won the £10,000 First Prize for his latest painting of his mother - called Blue Room. Winner of the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2015 £10,000 First Place Blue Room by Akash Bhatt Over the years the artist has drawn and painted both his parents and developed a suite