MATURE FACES
People like faces. Babies are drawn to them without knowing why, whereas adults use them to engage and relate. Faces tell us so much about a person, from expressions revealing one’s inner thoughts in that very instant, to wrinkles and laughter lines betraying many years’ worth of life experience. Faces are also the reason for the enduring popularity of one of the world’s biggest and most prestigious open art competitions.
The National Portrait Gallery’s annual portrait award was launched back in 1980 with sponsorship from tobacco company John Player & Sons. Early winners included Alison Watt, Humphrey Ocean and Tai-Shan Schierenberg, the latter now a judge on Sky Arts’ Artist of the Year series.
In 1989, the competition swapped one controversial sponsor with another and the BP Portrait Award was born. Starting out with an upper age limit and a £5,000 ensured it attracted a new generation of portrait painters. Evening Standard’s late art critic Brian Sewell called it “an invitation to the young to renew and revive a genre that had been betrayed by the old”.
Annabel Cullen in 1990 for a striking self-portrait seated on a bed, which was followed by Justin Mortimer’s , painted when the artist was only 21 years old. The 2007 prize was scooped by Paul Emsley who went on to create the 2012 that divided critics and public alike.
