Portraits of local schoolgirls by local artist exhibited at the Royal Academy and National Portrait Gallery over the summer
If you’re visiting the BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery or the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy over the summer, please look out for my two portraits. I’m an artist, who lives locally in West Norwood, and I have been extremely lucky this year to have had two portraits, one of each of my two daughters, selected for these two popular exhibitions.
At the National Portrait Gallery you’ll find my painting of my eldest daughter, Pearl, painted in her Kingsdale Foundation School uniform, titled “Pearl in the morning, ready for school”.
I entered the painting in the BP Portrait Award 2016 at the beginning of the year, and was over the moon to discover in March that it had been included as one of the final 53. There had been 2,557 entries from 80 countries around the world, the exhibition has a reputation for being the most prestigious international portrait painting competition there is and it’s been a wonderful, unforgettable experience being part of it. The show runs until 4th September at the National Portrait Gallery and then goes on to various other galleries around the UK for a year. It’s free and apart from obvious reasons, I highly recommend visiting it this year. It’s been described as being very different from previous years. There’s a lot less photorealism (judge Jenny Saville has said she pushed for more painterly paintings) and many more smaller, intimate portraits instead of the huge over-sized heads of recent years.
My youngest daughter, Rose, is at the Royal Academy in the 248th Summer Exhibition. I painted Rose in her Hitherfield Primary School uniform in “Rose’s School Picture”
There were 12,000 entries for the Summer Exhibition, and I was, again, delighted to find out my painting had got through the many rounds of judging and been selected for the final 1,200. You can find it in room VIII, curated by David Remfry RA, catalogue #896. I ended up tearing home from holiday early so as not to miss Varnishing Day, historically the day for artists to varnish their pictures, but now the first in a series of private views before the exhibition is open to the public. The day started with the artists being led by a steel band in a procession along Piccadilly to St James’s Church for the Service for Artists and then we all rushed in to the Academy to see the show and find our pieces. David Remfry was very charming and lovely to meet and I was very pleased to see he’d even mentioned my painting on the blurb inside the gallery entrance. Buyer’s Day the following week was also a great experience and it was lovely to see a red dot appear under Rose’s portrait.
The exhibition, which has been held every year since 1769, makes a lot of money to fund the RA schools which provide free postgraduate tuition to 17 students. The show runs until 21 August at the RA.
I’ve always worked as a scenic artist, painting sets for theatre, TV, retail and the odd film and despite a reasonably rewarding career, I’m absolutely loving switching my focus now to painting portraits.
These 2 exhibitions have given my confidence a real boost and if you’d like to see more of my paintings or even better, to commission a portrait, please take a look at my website samanthafellows.co.uk You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
