Artist of the Year
Contents |
Host
Joan Bakewell (2013-2020, 2021-)
Frank Skinner (2013-2018)
Stephen Mangan (2018-)
Co-hosts
Judges: Kate Bryan, Tai-Shan Schierenberg, Kathleen Soriano
Broadcast
Storyvault Films for Sky Arts, 5 November 2013 to present
Portrait Artist of the Week, Facebook Live and Sky Arts, 2020 to present
Synopsis
In the latest union of high and low culture, art critic Joan Bakewell and football fan Frank Skinner combine forces to find the best portrait painter in the country. The prize is £10,000, and a commission to paint the author Hilary Mantel for permanent display in the British Library.
Heats took place in a travelling marquee, with competitors depicting various celebrities who could sit still for four hours. Any 2D medium was acceptable, and indeed a lot of the interest lay in having contestants working in (for example) pastels, watercolour and pencil all up against each other. The best artist in each heat went to Paris for mentoring, before producing a piece for the final.
After two years in the portrait shape, Sky rotated the canvas to produce Landscape Artist of the Year. Competitions ran in both orientations from 2017. Channel 4 bought the series in 2019, as part of a wider content-sharing deal with Sky.
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a few changes, with that year's second Portrait series being socially-distanced, audience-free, and with Stephen Mangan hosting solo as 87-year-old Joan Bakewell was shielding. Bakewell fronted the audience-participation spin-off Portrait Artist of the Week (a sitting livestreamed on Facebook with Sky Arts joining in for the last hour, after which viewers can submit their handiwork with a winner declared the following week) from home, and was still able to join Mangan for the Landscape series as it is, naturally, filmed almost entirely out of doors.
Champions
| 2013 (Portrait) | Nick Lord |
| 2014 (Portrait) | Christian Hook |
| 2015 (Landscape) | Nerine Tassie |
| 2016 (Landscape) | Richard Allen |
| 2017 (Portrait) | Gareth Reid |
| 2017 (Landscape) | Tom Voyce |
| 2018 (Portrait) | Samira Addo |
| 2018 (Landscape) | Jen Gash |
| 2019 (Portrait) | Duncan Shoosmith |
| 2019 (Landscape) | Fujiko Rose |
| 2020 (Portrait, March) | Christabel Blackburn |
| 2020 (Portrait, December) | Curtis Holder |
| 2021 (Landscape) | Ophelia Redpath |
Theme music
Nick Harvey
