Selected Artists and statistics - BP Portrait Award 2019

This post is about the artists behind the 44 portraits selected for the BP Portrait Award 2019 Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

The exhibition opens to the public on 13 June 2019 and admission is free (see details at the end).

Ruminating Man by Frances Bell

As always this post takes rather longer (hours and hours!) to write than usual and that's why it's being published today and not yesterday as indicated on Monday.

At the end there is a BIG TIP for those aspiring to enter in 2020 and beyond....

Selection Process

The competition is open to all artists aged 18 and over from around the world.

In 2019:

• 2,538 artists submitted a portrait as a digital image to the BP Portrait Award 2018. (2,667 artists in 2018)
• from 84 countries (minus 4 countries compared to 2018).
• Of these 290 (11%) made it through the first stage assessment and got to hand deliver or courier their actual portrait for viewing by the Judging Panel.
• Of these just 44 (1.7%) have been selected for this prestigious annual exhibition - which will be seen by more than 250,000 people

In terms of geography, out of the 44 selected artists from all over the world

• 20 portraits (45%) came from the UK - England, Scotland and Northern Ireland (52% in 2018) 
• 24 portraits (55%) came from 81 other countries (48% in 2018)

Key changes in statistics include

• a very significant reduction on the number (50+) which have been selected in the past (eg 55 portraits in 2012)
• a very significant reduction in the number of selected portraits by UK artists
• an apparently big increase in artists who have never had their work selected for the exhibition before

Effectively this means that over time, the number of UK artists being selected for this competition has more of less halved.  

It's now very much an international competition - not a UK one.

Selected Artists (and statistics)

Below are short profiles of the selected artists. Links in their names are to their websites. (Note that almost every artist has a website )

The artists are ordered according to 

• their country of origin and
• the number of artists that hail from each country highlighted

Artists are welcome to send me images of selected portraits and/or photos of them with their portrait - and they will be added into this post.

I'm still trying to work out the statistics. Below I've got one artist without a country (although I suspect it's Colombia) - and numbers that don't tie in with the press release. There seem to be more Americans and fewer Brits.

UK (19 artists)

England (15)

• Jane Beharrell - a painter of figures and still life. She's from Hull, but is now based in Beverley, East Yorkshire. First time in the BP.
• Frances Bell RP SWA (see her portrait at the top of this post) Facebook Page A full time professional portrait and landscape painter and elected a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2018 (and her work can be seen at the RP Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries from tomorrow). Born in Cambridge in 1983, and raised in Suffolk and now basw in Northumberland. Studied portraiture at the Charles. H. Cecil Studios in 2001 for 3 years, and then taught sporadically at the Charles Cecil studios for a further 7 summers. She has exhibited widely and internationally and won a number of prizes.  In 2019, one of her paintings was awarded a Certificate of Excellence from the Portrait Society of America in this years International competition.

Frances Bell with her portrait of Ruminating Man.

• Frances Borden - Won 2nd prize in 1998 - In 2019 selected for both the BP and the Ruth Borchard Portrait Prize. Studied art at Chelsea College of Art & Design - BA (Hons) Fine Art (Painting) (1993 to 1996). Regularly selected for exhibitions by other art competitions and previously selected for the BP Portrait Award in 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000,  and 2016  
• Simon Thomas Braiden - Born 1971. He's a self-taught artist who is a member of Manchester Academy of Fine Art. His work has been seen in exhibitions in Manchester, Buxton and London. self taught artist born in Manchester in 1971. Early Flemish painting and 20th Century Modern Realist painting have been his main influences. He has exhibited extensively throughout the UK in both private and public galleries. Previously selected in 2018 - when I interviewed him for BP Portrait Award 2018 - Artists with their paintings
• Bridget Cox - b. 1951. A practising artist currently living in Cumbria. Trained at the Carlisle College of Art and Design and the University of Ulster, Belfast BA(Hons) painting. Her paintings are in private and public collections in the UK, Ireland and France.  Her portrait titled ‘Chinese Cloth’ is of Hilary Linton of Brampton
• Vanessa Garwood - Born in Israel 1982, Vanessa studied painting and sculpture for three years at Charles Cecil Studios in Florence.  Now she lives and works in west London. Also selected for BP Portrait Award 2018 Facebook Page 
• Emma Hopkins - Shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award 2019 - see 40th BP Portrait Award (2019) Shortlist
• Tedi Lena - studied at CASS and successfully completed Undergraduate program in Fine Art and got my result 95%. July 2018 Awarded Degree of Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours London Metropolitan University. Painted Frank Bowling for the exhibition. Leading an Exhibition Tour on 28 June
• Jeff Midghall - Graduated with BA (Hons) Fine Art, Kent Institute of Art & Design, Canterbury, UK in 1997. Possibly based somewhere in France?

• Keith Milow - born 1945 in London, grew up in Baldock, Hertfordshire, lived in New York City and Amsterdam, now lives in London. He is an abstract sculptor, as well as a painter and printmaker.  (Note artwork online makes no sense in terms of portraiture!)
• Sarah Jane Moon - Sarah Jane comes from New Zealand and is a painter and printmaker who specialises in portraiture and figurative painting and explores identity, sexuality and gender presentation. In New Zealand she graduated in 2003 with BA - Art History, English Literature, Japanese Victoria University of Wellington and in 2007 BA (Hons) Visual Arts Theory University of Western Australia, Perth. After coming to the UK she studied for Diploma in Portrait Painting at The Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, UK (where she now teaches regularly). She has exhibited extensively and regularly been selected for the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

Dr Ronx by Sarah Jane Moon

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