Portrait Artist Of The Year 2020 Episode 07 HDTV Cherzo

[Music] hello we're at battersea arts center for the deeply philosophical show where we encourage artists to get some perspective to ponder the relativity of time and to keep one eye on the bigger picture actually two eyes are generally better for a portrait welcome back it's portrait artist of the year competing in today's heat are six professional artists psy sapsford leanne rutter aleister farley deborah pierce leora chiproot and vincent michael brown i'm so excited to be here i can't wait to see who i'm painting hopefully i get some ideas hopefully it goes well and amateur artists karen clark licia santos and jack dixon nervous will be putting it mildly i'm petrified today's artists will only have four hours to create a work of art time time time time it's my biggest concern at the moment they'll need perseverance like to do the eyes a bit better and the mouse and probably leave the nose quite a few other features left to impress our exacting judges it's not as i would have liked why don't you just turn around three times and click your heels together and look at it one more time it might look completely different it's all for the chance to win a ten thousand pound commission to paint the international ballet star and choreographer carlos acosta for the birmingham museum and art gallery so who will have the attitude and imagination the worst thing that could happen that it doesn't look at all like him and then i'll go abstract i'll get my little feather brush oh yes it was meant to be to reach the semi-final panicking uh no really could you panic there you go thank you that's better [Music] while the artists prepare for the day the judges review their submissions i hope you're feeling chipper and robust because we have quite an emotional wall for you this morning we start with this very sad face it's a sad face but there's an energy today that's been painted there's a lot of joy in the making of it [Music] i think what i'm really struck by is these fantastic colors to take these very rich greens and blues and have them you know come into the tones on the face is really really beautiful [Music] what i love about this little portrait is that you have to work really hard to find the artist in it but the more time you spend with it the more you feel that you know the features of the face what i think is charming about this painting is that they've worked within a very tight range of colors it's all these browns and yellows which actually probably shouldn't be very attractive but it's managed to stay fresh it's not gone muddy i think self-portrait is plant it's very organic but what's most compelling i think is the very contemporary look i agree with you that the look is contemporary but i feel like the presentation the way of painting is very traditional and the expression is just spectacular this next one are getting out what are you looking at vibe there's the kind of fleshiness of the face it's really well done because it isn't sort of slavishly copied this next gentleman and ty clearly share a tailor yeah great tasting shirts i must say yeah um the shirt in its delicate sort of patternedness in stark contrast so i think is a very confrontational look this next one is a pair of victorian puppets it's really intriguing it belongs in a kind of dark fairy tale book or something i think that's fantastic that we've got an artist who is so different from everybody else there's an incredible range of coloured pencils that this artist has used but they've also had the confidence to go back in with just plain old graphite to delineate the t-shirt neckline so that's the wall we have a dash of melancholia a little bit of confrontation and some idiosyncratic eccentricity what are we going to get today [Music] with paints and artists prepared for the day it's time to meet the sitters artists since starting out with the royal shakespeare company your sitter has drawn critical acclaim for a string of striking performances in theater tv comedy and iconic films such as life is sweet but it was her not so little voice that inspired a west end play and its hugely successful film adaptation please welcome the absolutely fabulous jane horrocks [Applause] this is your home oh lovely four hours yeah how are you feeling about four hours sitting in a chair i'm going to have to do something aren't i meditation do you think go deep inside yeah yeah yeah you play some iconic characters do you find people mistake you for your characters sometimes they're very familiar with me i was in a restaurant i was with my boyfriend and they were not sure who he was this after i've seen you in plenty of things and then they went to me and grabbed my cheek went we know you are what are you hoping they capture today i don't know maybe something that's not obvious okay not bobble so artists i'll leave you with jane enjoy painting her today thank you hi jane hi hi there how would you like me to sit um whatever i mean can i lose my shoes yeah yeah yeah yeah what about this side and whichever's comfortable for you yeah lovely yeah artists your sitter today is a prolific actor with an mbe for his services to drama he won us over in four weddings in the funeral left us on the edge of our seat in killing eve let's see how he gets on in the thick of it today it's david haye hello hello hi how are you very good very well yes prolific i like that you are prolific what's important in a portrait for you my two favorite portrait artists so you can go to rembrandt and lucy and freud so well there you go that's the bar rembrandt or freud artists i will leave you with your sitter enjoy painting david okay and what do you three look for in portraits rembrandt is my absolute favorite i think rembrandt called emotion probably better than any artist before him honesty without offending offense wouldn't bother me if you were if you want to try and offend me you won't succeed i don't want to do that you can do anything really artists your sitter today shot to fame as one half of the chart-busting duo rizzle kicks he's since released his own solo music and become a well-known advocate for mental health he's also an accomplished screen actor presenter and soon-to-be children's author please welcome jordan stevens hey hello hi how are you have a seat jordan and friend who's this is spike come on spike spike lee jones milligan stevens is his foreign virus he's a rescue actually how is he yeah from macedonia from macedonia yeah he ran all the way okay that's a long way to come yeah yeah so jordan you're a creator you create all the time yes what's going to be going through your head for the next four hours yeah i know sitting still and i'll probably try and write in my head like an entire script or something okay artists i will leave you with spike and jordan thanks mate i've got tattoos i don't know if anyone it would be nice to see more of your shoulders like kids it's easier with the white shirt because it's very beige all the tones and stuff so that looks quite nice artists we know you are eager to get started you have four hours to complete your portraits your time starts now remember i'm going to lift one of these [Music] jack i can see your very meticulous palette which i like a lot i get really annoyed when i see messy palettes and then you've got a second palette great tones i do they're going to be for the skin tones later on because i tend to go really technicolor so the grays are found adding those to a color helps to just tone them down [Music] jack dixon is a school master who lives with his family on the school campus his self-portrait took 15 hours we have to celebrate our shirtiness yes yes we certainly have got into the tape embraced this shirt it is yeah it's wonderful um now i understand you teach art i do yeah to uh 14 to 18 year olds wow i'm surprised you've got any energy left at the end of the day i'm impressed that you get some painting done by the time you get back home and doing your own stuff it's there's nothing left it's a hollow shadow yeah judging by your submission there is something left yeah mid-life crisis [Music] seven artists are working in oils today which allows them the freedom to adjust things as they go along besides like watching someone conduct a portrait into being i don't think i've ever seen anyone work with two brushes i like to have one to put paint on and one to take off i can just dip it in the tips and take off if it's in the wrong place but my background is sculpture and i sort of feel like i'm feeling my way around it a lot more if i've got both hands going cy sabsford lives in london and divides her time between teaching and making mechanised sculptures using old furniture she's only recently returned to painting do you not paint on a regular basis then i haven't been painting for about three or four years the portrait i did was just sort of four years ago my goodness um you've been very brave risk-taking yes that's what i thought as well well you've made a confident start this central position is often the hardest because you've got the sitter face on maybe slightly less shadow but you seem to have embraced that i did want it sort of twisted you know when his eyes go in which i haven't done yet they'll be looking off in a different direction i think that might pull that that contra poster yeah that is what i'm trying for which i haven't quite got there yet [Music] i quite like working bigger life but the challenges that i've got going large in life will be really sort of just capturing all the creases and wrinkles and everything i haven't got the lines yet which lines are you referring to i think i'm a smooth-skinned youth hunter karon clark teaches art and design to children with autism and paints at her south london studio several days a week karen it's nice to see you working in watercolor today because they can be quite unforgiving you know oil you can move everything around and change it with watercolor if you make too many changes you end up with a big soggy piece of paper i know i think i quite like the challenge of it ah you have to really think about how you're placing the colors and work through the mistakes sometimes it's those things that happen accidentally are the really exciting things it is okay well it's a beautiful start oh thank you so much i loved having joseph because of his personality i want something that i can get across not of his physical likeness but of his soul that's what i'm aiming for licia santos studies fine art and history at goldsmiths university her submission features a well witchier plant from angola where she grew up lisia is that a plant on your head it is a plant okay i'm glad you noticed well you've lucked out today with jordan because i mean he's not got a plant on his head but there's plenty going on up there isn't that i love these hair yeah is art your only creative outlet do you do other stuff i also dance you dance yes jordan's a dancer too aren't you jordan i kind of always almost invented a dance to be honest back in the day well ish yeah the hump as it were right there you go yeah jordan's got the ham it wasn't very impressive i've got to be real with you but it did catch on the artists have just three hours left worst thing that could happen that it doesn't look at all like him and then i'll go abstract i'll get my little feather brush out oh yes it was meant to be for me it's really important to keep it fresh and alive but i'm not actually that happy with what i'm starting this year but i think i'm just gonna have to think about what i'm doing really what jane's wearing the white dots you're a completely different white from the background so hopefully that will give me a chance to play if i ever get to that stage if i get a nose in and some eyes in that'll be great today's artists are creating portraits of musician jordan stevens and actors david hague and jane horrocks they've spent the last hour studying every detail of their faces and their feet i keep moving my feet about is that a problem because if you want me to keep them in a particular place literally it's absolutely fine but while it's important to capture features accurately a successful portrait needs to offer something more david is my ideal sort of sister really we both like rembrandt i think more than any other artist before him rembrandt captured a humanity that would be ideal and this difficult thing to try and achieve i'd settle for a likeness that would be good vincent michael brown is completely self-taught but was selected for the bp award and now regularly takes commissions his self-portrait took two hours using his daughter's pencil crayons vincent no pencils today no critics my favorite about painting oils is um my acrylic technique is more like an oil technique no no absolutely i can see that you're comfortable painting in this kind of situation as you refine your brushes get smaller are you then chasing likeness more yeah i want to get something going on more with colors as well and keep playing between the glazes and the opaque paint and also you're working on a aluminium it means if you ruin the painting it has a scrap value deborah yes looks like to me she's assessing her life thank you are you jay you're thinking jane yes and a tiny tiny hint of sadness yeah it's a different kind of side of jane and when you came on it was more about if people see something different to me other than that kind of the bubbles or the right the singer the whatever you actually listened to the sitter i did i did actually implementing that in your painting i'm trying this could be a first [Music] deborah pierce has exhibited around europe since graduating in fine art from central saint martins as well as being an artist she's worked as a hypnotherapist life coach and actor so you're a creative powerhouse well try and be i mean acting is very much uh a team game i kind of need a bit of both right i love the camaraderie i love all the fun team player park control freak except what you're saying yes right so getting back to your portraits yes what are you going to work on it's a challenge to get the eyes right because i've got her head on an angle it's just making sure that that's working so okay i'll go and see it finished i can't wait to see it finished either i'm doing a pencil sketch which has already gone a little up and down i definitely put the i in wrong just hope i can do him justice illustration graduate leanne rutter started her submission when travelling in malawi she was feeling sad and liked the contrast of her expression with the light and bright colours liam the background in yourself portrait is just so important it's so much part of the storytelling clearly it's missing here you're hoping to get to i'm hoping to get to it and you pulled him completely over to this left-hand side leaving this lovely emptiness on the right yeah compositionally is that a device that you like that sort of counterbalance i do with him being kind of slightly tilting his head a little bit i thought it would be quite nice having a little bit more narrative i was hoping to have a good amount more time for the background so we'll see we'll see how that goes in each heat the sets reference what you might see in the background of famous portraits so kate the sets today we're in the world of work we certainly are we got the domestic the agricultural and the industrial these sets really talk about the moment in art history where it became interesting to think about the kind of daily activity of people so behind jane of these bed sheets you know obviously we had classical drapery this is an updated version of it in a domestic environment behind jordan we've got the wheat fields and of course it makes you think of van gogh and then here behind davis is these fantastic cogs wearing away david as with a lot of actors knows what's expected of him yeah he wants to present very much he doesn't want to break his gesture i'm consciously trying to just be very quiet one thing i'm sure of is they'll all be very different i'm very interested to see which one just hit me as encompassing something that i recognise jordan's a very engaged presence and he looks great and i think the tones are fantastic as well with the light falling on his hair you pick up all the colors and with the richness of the clothing it all just works i thought i could definitely get into a zen place but i found myself quite easily distracted white could be very stark but it seems to work really well jane's summery dress i was a bit worried that the white would be too neutral but speaking to the artists here they've all found in the whites other colors they can work with i was thinking actually about my great grandma and whilst i've been sat here i felt i've kind of been embodying her especially with these white sheets because i come from a cotton making industry i feel sort of quite at home in this environment [Music] what i'm getting here is very much a sense of jane without it being absolutely precise are you looking for likeness in a mood way i think something about the pose and with the bare feet she looks quite vulnerable you never see those photos of marilyn monroe and she sort of looks quite pensive so i'm trying to capture that what i'm liking is the way you're talking about this as a story and that's really coming across in your initial drawings liora chiproot is completing an m.a in print at camberwell college of arts london she used her reflection in a mirror for the faces in her self-portrait but the bodies come from something completely different in your self-portrait there is a sense of you as puppet yeah i like drawing from life um but i wanted to create characters from my head so i started to build puppet models to draw from i've got one to show you actually it is spooky yeah no they are yeah but i think it's a kind of means to an end because i wanted to create characters that sit in between real people and uh kind of imagine when i see this puppy there's a definite flavor here in your self-portrait and that is appearing in your image of jane so i'm really intrigued to see how that evolves we'll see [Music] very enigmatic start alistair yeah how you feeling about the likeness it's moving around a lot at the minute so it's just finding a place where i'm happy with it and then i can start really trying model the form and then i'm going to start thinking about the hair as well and in the background juggling it all together because it has to work as a whole as well that's the problem fine art graduate alistair farley is completing an m.a at london's royal drawing school but only recently felt ready to enter the competition are you finding the nerve to something you're having to overcome today it's just like a very strange environment really i think painting for me in my studio it's like a very intimate thing but i'm getting ready to kind of put on more and more paint now i have to say when i saw that you were working with oil and that you were wearing those trousers i was very pleased to see you put an apron on yes yes definitely yeah no i came into my studio the other day and everybody was like oh that's a very risky pair of trousers you got on so yeah it's quite a nervous experience the artists have just over two hours left to finish their work i'm still not 100 happy with the face the colors look a bit muddy just gonna keep going see how far i can take it again it's got a lovely tan and unfortunately it's taking all the colours over in the warm side of the spectrum i want to get some cold colours to work in opposition so it's a little bit more interesting to the eye oh no that drop down a bit of an accident i will work with it i've got a fair bit of the color down but it's about refining it and making sure it all works i am cautiously [Music] confident [Music] here at battersea art center david hague jane horrocks jordan stevens and spike the dog have been holding their pose for two hours so while they've been doing their bit how have the artists been getting on halfway through is the work we're getting today industrious agricultural well filthy it's fabulous yeah it really is it's a really good day i think it's got something to do with the sitters they are all absolutely inspirational alastair tsai and lysia have a lot in front of them i wonder whether this is a bit afraid and she's got this beautiful drawing of jordan she's got the palette ready i wonder whether she's waiting for a sign from the drawing to go right i'm ready they don't give science drawings you just gotta get on with it psy admitted to me that she hasn't really painted for the last three or four years what she has done is a beautiful drawing in paint and i've just seen she's starting to add skin tones and they're not sitting where they should be and so i think once she gets her eye in it's very straightforward size a bit like leanne who's painting david that they've both spent a really long time doing the drawing leanne did it in pencil it what's interesting david's just sitting there being david and they've got all these different readings vincent's her master of the acrylic because as david appeared it was just beautifully painted karon's giving us quite a sizeable david i mean at the moment she seems incredibly nervy i just want her to relax and sort of take a little bit out of david's book you know he's very cool so jack seems very calm where he is is he right to be calm yes he's picked a rather melancholic jane and then you've got deborah who's got a rather sweet jane and then you've got leora who's got this very strange dark puppet chain there is an oddness to leona's work isn't there she gives us so much of herself in the portrait of the sitter as well i'm really intrigued by where this is going i think it will take us somewhere very far away from here well i think today's work they've got some hard craft ahead of them this afternoon because out of nine artists only one will be promoted hmm i've resisted looking at any of the paintings i think they're all going to be massively different i think i'm probably going to be quite wowed by them i love painting and sculpture and i've loved this show for a long time and therefore i'm inherently fascinated in what they feel a very neutral focused expression brings out about me i like picking up on like habitual kind of mannerisms and stuff like that i love that alistair does this do when he paints with one hand in his pocket which i think is fascinating i love that size quite still i think she's quite still alicia she seems to be analyzing me the most spy thank you so much [Music] alyssia we were talking about how you were drawing and drawing and not getting to your painting and then i've just noticed what you were drawing was a dog spike his own blue that looks great i really like animals in general but i can see that my sister really has a relationship with dogs so i really want to bring this about him in in the portrait and their eyes are also looking in the same direction and if you draw it like a diagonal line they cross each other i just want to really emphasize that connection [Music] working to a deadline can be tough and everyone reacts differently to the challenge come on i'm sensing uh rising panic what's going on here it's not as as i would have liked definitely not i don't know maybe i can't work as well under pressure as i thought i think you can't see the good of it why don't you just turn around three times and click your heels together and look at it one more time it might look completely different [Music] so you're the least stressed person i've ever come across in this situation i was it was more stressful before lunch because i hadn't got the whole outlined and i hadn't realized how much time had passed and i came back feeling very relaxed okay yeah it's about the tones yeah am i getting the essence of jordan not long left yeah panicking uh no really could you panic there you go thank you that's better yeah okay i don't like this color very much they're kind of on the cheeks yeah it's it's my fault i think it's a bit late to to change it is it why this is what i'll do i'll go oh it's easy i'll mix up a different one put it on and then that will mess up that eye and then that will mess up that and then i'll just be like going around in a circle and then i'll be panicking okay have you found jane as a sitter oh she's great have you been chatting much a little bit i've not wanted to chat to them i want them to get on with it just leave them alone all right sorry the artists have just half an hour left to finish their portraits [Music] time time time time time it's my biggest concern at the moment i still have uh his main features to do i just have to be fast with painting and get it done i have the background the neck a little bit of clothing left to do i would have loved to have spent more time on the face the worst thing that could happen right now is that i didn't get the board covered [Music] like to do the eyes a bit better and the mouth actually yeah and probably leave the nose yeah so quite a few other features left our nine artists are nearing the end of their four hour challenge painting david hague jane horrocks and jordan stevens dizzy made me very happy there's spike the dog oh good he's made the appearance sometimes my paintings work just towards the end it's always a matter of accidental conclusions it could either go right or wrong there's a lot more i need to do i should have concentrated a little bit more on the eyes i'm just trying to do that in the last five minutes now i'm thinking of cutting it down i think that is a good thing to do and i will pay the consequences if my fellow judges disagree [Music] artists you have five minutes left [Music] i still keep going back to the face and seeing if it's got the expression that i want but i've been looking at it for so long i can't really see it anymore it's like i don't know what it looks like [Music] artists your time is up please put down your equipment and step away from your portrait it's time for the sitters to see their portraits and to choose which one they're going to take home jordan how was that for you yeah it was uh went faster than i expected i just feel very happy to to be experiencing it really and spike has been the most well behaved sitter we've ever had on the show a lot better than me let's do it then artists please turn your easels [Music] whoa oh man all the separate parts of my personality yes only three yeah actually there's nothing there's a lot more right let's have a closer look so alistair been most intrigued of how my hair would be translated but very textured and layered and i think he's nailed that there it's wicked man it feels like fluid you know yeah like a bit water like yeah it's wild there's there's like a softness to the tones and of course this spike in it which gets away to my heart that for sure in blue as well which is interesting the moment of truth it is tough but i think i want to go with this yeah it's my favorite well done [Applause] jane how did you uh what did you do did you zone out i i did it was funny because i went into a zone that was much more who i am rather than trying to be an actor so probably aged masses in these pictures well let's have a look artists please turn your easels wow gosh they're so different should we have a closer look yeah [Music] it's a very kind of gentle sort of relaxed me which is really lovely i love the the small scale of this painting yeah and i really like it that you did the whole body [Music] looks like i'm about to burst into tears which is um i think it's so sad oh um well you did say at the beginning you were wondering if they'd find another side of you i mean it's really beautiful it's beautiful you get to take one of them home i think that they're all brilliant in their own right but i've got sam drawn to leoras so i've done leora [Applause] artists please turn your easels wow bloody well done all of you that is terrific vincent some late drama cropping the canvas great choice i think it seems very contained isn't it i feel flattered by the strength of the gaze i love it they've found a sort of sense of mischief i suppose is the only word that comes to my mind you have three portraits i think all showing a different side of you strength mischief but something melancholically contemplative in that one i recognize as a 64 year old me so i'm gonna go for that one as the artists take a break the judges review the finished portraits alyssia painted the dog spike made an appearance at the 11th hour she's an artist obviously who's got this great skill almost like classical and then wants to find an edge size portrait of jordan i think it's got great strength and a great clarity to it there was something heroic about jordan but also very down to earth and i think that sort of in-betweenness has been caught beautifully here and there's a real sense of activity which then makes you think a bit more about narrative because he's so in the middle of something i love that storytelling that's in something that's so simple as the head alice's painting is of a a revolutionary about to set off and change the world it's quite hard to transcend this sort of earthy 19th century hero vibe and he's taken it way back to a classical world i'm amazed that leanne managed to finish that background but i'm really glad she has done because it's a really important part of that composition now carron what a great head it was so sad she thought she'd failed i think towards the end of the day it's just such a luminous portrait of david this sings it's fantastic i have to admit that i encouraged vincent to cut these down so please don't i like this really large it feels like such an intensely finished portrait david is there but he's not quite there enough jane is one of those actors who i mean she holds so much information in the tiny tilt of her head you feel that in the poignancy in the way in which deborah's positioned that head it's complex i find it hard to read though i find it hard to know whether or not it's a good likeness leora it's a painting that one could live with and every time you walk past it there'd be another story that you'd make up about it i think jack's a really interesting artist of the three he's brought it closer to what was in front of him the judges must now decide on their top three this is fantastic but it's not a right portrait i think that's about promise it's about interesting it's about more than a portrait these three look great together they do well i would be delighted with this i really like that actually yeah excellent [Music] artists it's never easy but the judges have selected a shortlist of three the first artist is karon clarke [Music] [Applause] the second artist is psy sapsford [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the third artist to be shortlisted is liora chiproot [Applause] [Music] [Applause] although i wasn't shortlisted this is such a unique experience that is wonderful if i could i would love to repeat the day but i just enjoyed every moment to help decide who to put into the semi-final the judges look at today's portraits alongside the original submissions good day sitters that really inspired some good art today really strong sitters all super full of character and total inspiration to their artists you can feel it in what's been created now psy painted jordan it's beautiful the way the paint's been put down it's difficult to filter she's got attitude in both the self-portrait and in the way in which she captured jordan and there's subtlety in it to the point where i look at the eyes and i see the whole range of jordan's character being played out there i don't think i've seen an artist react with such disbelief as karan to being selected for the final three she's given a luminosity to david that now i see in the self-portrait on the side of the face as the sunlight comes through so she's really working with the support very effectively to decide in such a monumental head and then sort of really expose yourself by making it really large i think that shows courage and the confidence what you're doing today liora gave us more than a portrait she gave us a story it feels like a true vignette there's so much of it that is jane the body language the fragile features that she has but yeah at the same time it's not literal but art's not really designed to be literal i have to ask you to put your heads together and try and come up with one artist out of these three that you will be seeing another portrait from i want to see another painting by all three of these artists i'm not ready to let any of them go it's going to be horrible honestly to leave two of these artists behind it's been such a strong day leora karan and sai you should all be proud of what you produced today but only one of you can go through to the semi-final the artists that the judges have selected created a sensitive and multi-faceted portrait and that artist is [Applause] i just can't believe it i really thought currency was the one that was going to win because i just loved her painting i'm really proud yeah i can't wait to tell my family it's really exciting it's been really good experience i want to do it again i want to do more i was really pleased to be um shortlisted i thought size portrait was really beautiful we're very excited for sy's works she's able to capture the complexity of the human psyche but she does it in a beautifully painted way and we can't wait to see what the next painting is going to bring getting into the semi-finals is like a dream country i'm really excited i'm also a bit nervous about that maybe i need to practice a bit more [Music] if you'd like to find out more about the competition go to sky arts artist of the year dot tv [Music] [Music] you

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Id: wN9NjZW2WBg

Length: 44min 35sec (2675 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2020