RI Annual Exhibition 2019 - Awards and Candidates

The Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (RI) 207th Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries opened today after its Private View yesterday - at which the awards were announced.

Group of Paintings by the top prizewinner - on the left

The RI works very hard at making sure there are a wide range of awards for meritorious artwork in their show - and there are so many awards I've had to split them into four groups.

• cash awards
• art materials awards
• publication awards
• recognition awards

Below you can see which works won which prizes.

At the end are photos of the work by Candidates for Membership of the RI.

Cash Awards

The Winsor & Newton Award - Tianya Zhou

Tibetan Ama by Tianya Zhou  Watercolour 99 x 78cm £6,700

Tianya Zhou was the winner of the top award - the £3,000 Winsor & Newton Award.  He is is a traditional watercolourist specialising in painting Portraits & Figures. He mainly paints the people of Tibet.

Tianya Zhou was born in 1973 in Jingzhou, China, he was awarded Bachelor’s Degree from Hubei Institute of Fine Art, currently he lives and paints in Shenzhen and works as a curator and Professional artist of Luohu Cultural Center, also as Founder and organizer of Shenzhen International Watercolor Biennial Exhibition.

He's a member of

• Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI), 
• China Artists Association (CAA), 
• American Watercolor Society (AWS), 
• National Watercolor Society of USA (NWS), 
• Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (CSPWC), 
• Honorary Member of Australian Watercolour Institute(AWI).

The Leathersellers' Prize - Junwei Dai

Tuscan Sunshine by Junwei Dai Watercolour 70 x 50cm £5,000

Junwei Dai won the £1,000 prize awarded by The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers to an artist aged between 18 and 30 years old.

Junwei is a landscape architect. He comes from Danyang, Jiangsu, lives in Singapore and is a Signature membership of National Watercolor Society (USA).  According to his Facebook Page he's completely self-taught and only started painting watercolour three years ago.

I feel really honored to exhibit my painting in such a great event! Thanks for the jury and supporters of RI and the suggestion from Suzchiang Tan! After becoming signature member of NWS, this is absolutely another big encouragement for my exploring of watercolor since I learned it by myself 3 years ago. Next goal is to achieving membership of RI and signature membership of AWS including dolphin scholarship within 3 years!

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