Landscape Artist of the Year - Season 10 Episode 3 - Clifton Suspension Bridge
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00:00This programme contains strong language and adult humour.
00:13Hello, and welcome to Bristol,
00:15where today we're looking out over Isambard Kingdom Brunel's
00:19spectacular Clifton Suspension Bridge.
00:22Brunel famously called it my first love, my darling,
00:25which I understand, but for me is maybe a bridge too far.
00:29Welcome to a brand-new episode of Landscape Artist of the Year.
00:35It's heat three, and as eight new artists enter the pods,
00:38they're confronted by a daunting and dizzying view.
00:43Have I painted a bridge before? No, I haven't.
00:45But there's a thirst for everything.
00:48Fortunately, they've brought along some friends to keep them grounded.
00:52Until he's got his own pod.
00:54I mean, look at that.
00:56As always, they'll be working under the watchful gaze
00:59of our three distinguished judges.
01:02So you're doing all sorts of stuff you don't normally do?
01:05Yeah. Well, look, you've got to go for it, haven't you?
01:08And alongside are wildcards, most of whom are playing nicely.
01:13But there's always one.
01:15Chris, there are 50 wildcards. 49 of them are looking that way.
01:19Yeah.
01:22For the winning artist, the prize of a lifetime awaits.
01:27They'll be travelling to southern France,
01:29a region that's inspired some of the greats of art history,
01:32to carry out a £10,000 prize commission
01:35for the prestigious Courtauld Gallery in London.
01:39So who will create a riveting work of art?
01:43I've got a larger brush at home.
01:45Look, that really slapped it on. I couldn't even fit it in the car.
01:48And who will burn their bridges?
01:51I think just the expanse of that view could be a complete disaster.
01:57It's going to be a disaster.
02:12In Bristol today, we're joined by eight competitors.
02:17Sarah Harris, a mixed media artist from Warrington.
02:22Printmaker Ian Cox, who lives in Devon.
02:25Painter and illustrator Jonathan Hargreaves.
02:28And Ciaran Guckian, a former web designer from Dublin.
02:32I switched careers about just over a year ago,
02:35going into art full-time, so to get this is huge, yeah.
02:39Also taking part today are...
02:42Dan Wall, an expressionist painter from right here in Bristol.
02:46Gloucestershire artist Charlotte Kenyon.
02:50Chris Priestley, a writer and painter who lives in Cambridge.
02:54And from St Neots, contemporary landscape artist Jo Rance.
02:59I'm feeling excited, but, fingers crossed,
03:02I don't make something rubbish on the telly.
03:06Each artist has been chosen on the strength of a submission artwork,
03:10which they've brought along to display in their pods.
03:13And as they get set for the competition ahead...
03:16Oh, no. Failed at the first part. I can't even put the apron on.
03:21..each has their own strategy for success.
03:25Mostly I'm aiming to not paint something bad,
03:29something that I'm not going to immediately destroy,
03:32which happens quite a lot.
03:34Today's unusual item is Till, who is my best friend and familiar,
03:39and he's decided to come along as well and do his own painting.
03:43In case mine is rubbish, he's going to enter on my behalf.
03:51MUSIC PLAYS
03:58Artists, you have four hours to complete your artworks,
04:01and your time starts now.
04:11Can we take photos now?
04:14Can I go a bit further down there?
04:20Perched on the terrace of the historic Avon Gorge Hotel,
04:24high above the valley, today's artists are confronted
04:27by a breathtaking feat of 19th-century engineering.
04:32Look at that.
04:35The dramatic span of Clifton Suspension Bridge dominates their view,
04:39stretching across the gorge above the pods.
04:44Brunel's towers frame either end,
04:46standing tall atop the densely wooded and vertigo-inducing valley sides
04:51that plunge to the River Avon below.
04:56It's all kind of very dramatic.
04:58The bridge took 30-plus years to build,
05:01and we've got four hours to draw it.
05:04I like to get things just the way they are,
05:07so I'm a bit concerned about the number of trees,
05:11because that can cause problems.
05:17MUSIC PLAYS
05:25Today's view is marvellous in some respects,
05:29but potentially treacherous in others,
05:32so I am doing a panorama.
05:34It's a panorama, basically.
05:37Jonathan Hargreaves cycled for Team GB
05:40before a gear change saw him become a full-time painter.
05:44This shows the view over Cadiz
05:46from the bell tower of the Spanish city's cathedral.
05:50Hi, Jonathan. Hi.
05:52You're right in here with all this architectural detail.
05:55Yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:56I love the idea of something that's panoramic, engaging.
05:59Those things really float my boat.
06:01And it's difficult because the bridge is so bloody enormous,
06:04and I think, actually, this foregrounding
06:06gives you a jumping-off point for your eye to settle.
06:08It does.
06:09The initial photograph is slightly fisheye, so there's a bend.
06:13Thank you for your fabulous submission,
06:15which, again, has got the same sort of perspectival drive.
06:19Yes. You've given us this fabulous window.
06:21We're rushing over the view.
06:23It's just very large brushstrokes that imply some stonework.
06:27I mean, this one is, like...
06:29I've got a larger brush at home.
06:31I couldn't even fit it in the car.
06:33That's so funny.
06:34It's like you're doing your downstairs loo.
06:36LAUGHTER
06:44I'm very emotional when I paint.
06:48I think what sets my work apart from other artists
06:52is probably the struggle that goes into it.
06:58Born and bred Bristolian Dan Wall
07:01describes herself as a classic tormented artist.
07:05Her expressive submission in oils is of Glencoe's three sisters
07:10and represents the close bond she shares with her own.
07:15Hi, Dan. I feel like I've come in at the end of the challenge.
07:18What are you going to do with the rest of the four hours?
07:20I don't know.
07:21Like, sometimes I start painting and it doesn't go right
07:24and I sort of have this tantrum.
07:26So this could be my tantrum piece.
07:28Oh, I see.
07:29I'm such an emotional painter, so I'm just winging it.
07:32Well, your submission made us feel that you weren't winging it.
07:35Just the way in which the paint is applied and the layering,
07:38it's got a real vitality to it.
07:41So, today, what made you decide
07:43that you wanted to focus on that section there?
07:45Things sort of have an energy, so I'm just going with her.
07:49I just kind of feel like...
07:50It's female.
07:51All great things are female.
07:52Oh, well, that's true, but I didn't know about...
07:54No, no, she's a she. OK.
07:55So, yeah, she's singing.
08:04Spectacular, isn't it?
08:06It is fantastic.
08:07Yeah.
08:08I mean, and a lot of it has to do with sort of angles.
08:10We're sort of looking up at a bridge and there's a kind of abyss.
08:13It's just beautiful.
08:15And this sort of wall of green that's facing us,
08:18it's a really steep drop, isn't it, down to the avenue?
08:21I mean, it's fantastic.
08:22There is a problem, of course.
08:24It's very wide.
08:26Right.
08:27And it's very deep.
08:28Right.
08:29So a lot of editing has got to take place.
08:32And also, the sun is sort of coming in and out
08:34and that's also problematic.
08:36But that's, you know, the joy of painting outside in plain air.
08:39It's a beautiful structure. Who built it?
08:41The person with the best name of any name ever that ever existed.
08:45Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
08:47I mean, with a middle name like Kingdom...
08:51..you're set to do great things.
08:53Oh, yeah.
08:57Got a light.
09:00While I go off to check my girders,
09:02our next artist is busy solving the puzzle of today's view.
09:07When I'm painting a landscape, I almost treat it like a jigsaw,
09:10kind of just build it and then, fingers crossed,
09:13something that looks like what I'm trying to paint actually comes out.
09:19Jo Rance is an artist with a love of rural landscapes.
09:23Working in acrylics,
09:25she constructs an image in brightly coloured and textured patches,
09:28as in her vivid depiction of Dartmoor.
09:32I can see a bit about where you're headed
09:34because of your glorious submission.
09:36Yeah. I really remember this work
09:38because I really loved this sort of interplay that you had
09:40between something that felt like a tapestry or a textile.
09:43Yeah. But at the same time, you really thought about, like,
09:46the texture and the feeling of a landscape.
09:48Yeah. I try and take the forms from the actual landscape.
09:51As soon as I've got the sort of jigsaw of the painting down
09:54and the areas and everything,
09:56I can go in and I do, like, stippling and, like, little marks.
10:00And that gives us that tapestry feeling
10:02because they're all resisting each other. Yeah.
10:14When I'm painting a landscape,
10:16I'm trying to capture a feeling of that place.
10:18Like, what does it feel like to be there?
10:20So, yeah, today, I want to get the deepness of that gorge.
10:24Somehow, yeah, basically.
10:27Irishman Ciarán Guckian became a full-time artist just 12 months ago.
10:32His atmospheric landscape depicts a mountain ridge
10:35and deep ravine in County Wicklow,
10:38and he's also aiming to get to the bottom of things today.
10:42Hi, Ciarán. It's a very strange composition.
10:45You've decided to go for, like, the armpit,
10:48in the sense of where the tower and the bridge meet. Yeah.
10:51What interests me is the way it sits in the landscape
10:54and having the railway tunnel at the bottom
10:58really shows the height of this whole place.
11:00I like the way you can see just, like, how deep that is.
11:03So, Ciarán, let's talk about your submission. Yeah.
11:05It is a stunning bit of painting. It's very dramatic.
11:08You're using a lot of contrast.
11:10That's up in a place called Glendalough,
11:12and that cliff face, when the sun hits over,
11:15it goes completely into shadow,
11:17and then as the day goes, bits come up.
11:19So today's painting will be a similar thing
11:22where you will be waiting for it to do certain things
11:25that you want it to do and capture those bits.
11:27Yeah, if I can, yeah. OK.
11:31Just along the gorge,
11:33another 50 artists are also preparing to stare into the abyss,
11:37our fearless wildcats.
11:41I haven't painted outside before,
11:43and it was really interesting to come and see the bridge in real life.
11:47You feel like how it's strong and powerful.
11:50There's lots of history behind this bridge, yeah.
11:55We're on a slope, which is interesting,
11:57and there's a tree. Chainsaw would be good.
12:02A place in the semi-final could be on the cards
12:05for the artist who produces the judges' favourite landscape.
12:08And as ever, it pays to be prepared.
12:12I am all set for today.
12:14I've got my pastels, two flasks, lunch nibbles.
12:19I've got my easel with the leg that falls off.
12:21Hopefully it's not going to blow over,
12:23because if it blows over, the leg will fall off.
12:26Let's hope our wildcards come up with something absolutely gorgeous.
12:30Sorry.
12:42It is tricky, with all its changing light.
12:45I'm working a bit bigger than some of the people,
12:47so it just adds to the complexity.
12:53My textures and patterns come from what I see,
12:56you know, light and dark.
12:58The sunlight going in and out is fine, painting-wise.
13:01It's just quite hot.
13:04And Jo isn't the only artist feeling the heat.
13:12If you want to step away from it, start brushing out another.
13:16All right.
13:18Well done, I'm having a meltdown!
13:23I've decided I'm going to start another one.
13:26I'm like, oh, for heaven's sake, I'm going down in flames on TV.
13:32I don't know.
13:45High above Bristol's Avon Gorge,
13:48eight artists are taking on the gravity-defying span
13:51of Clifton Suspension Bridge,
13:54which should suit our next artist down to the ground.
13:58It's a mixture between, like, realism and a bit of surrealism.
14:03And I'm just looking at what shapes I can see.
14:05And then see how everything else works around it.
14:11Sarah Harris sees the world in bold combinations of shape and colour,
14:16which she translates into vibrant and imaginative works of art,
14:21as in her submission painting of an urban view in Manchester.
14:28It's brilliant, colourful and vibrant and a bit strange,
14:31and that's great!
14:33And I love the way that you've made us really think
14:35about the kind of architecture in a different way
14:38by creating these geographical shapes,
14:41which are, I guess, quite surreal, but also make sense.
14:44Yeah, it sort of just jumped out straight away.
14:47It looked like a tetrahedron rather than a column,
14:50so I wanted to convey that in the painting.
14:53And a very large, distinctive submission,
14:56played with scale and played with colour and played with shape.
14:59So we're seeing you do all of that now, which is beautiful.
15:01Yes, I like to push the colours
15:03and pick out the hues that are sort of talking to me.
15:06It's just so vibrant. It's absolutely full of life.
15:11MUSIC CONTINUES
15:21I think I'm just going to try and zero in
15:25on that end of the bridge there,
15:27cos it's quite a striking, monumental kind of shape,
15:31and I want to give it that heft.
15:34Chris Priestley divides his working time
15:37into writing and illustrating children's books.
15:41His snowy submission landscape in acrylics
15:44is a view of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge,
15:47the city he calls home.
15:51Chris, we've given you this very wide bridge.
15:54Yes.
15:55And you've chosen this tower on one end.
15:58Yes, I have. Why?
16:00Well, OK, I think trying to get the whole bridge in,
16:04it would have ended up a strange painting.
16:06It's got the monumental quality of that,
16:09that just interested me,
16:12to try and get the weight of that coming out of the trees.
16:15That is also a lot of red, which seems counterintuitive.
16:20Yeah, I'm just trying to get some underpainting through
16:23that will hopefully warm the painting up.
16:25Right. I would like to talk about your submission,
16:28which is not unadjacent in composition
16:31to what you've chosen today. Yeah.
16:33It's because of the structure and the weight of the building,
16:36so it's kind of interesting you've gone
16:38for this similar structure today. Yeah.
16:40We would like to see something as beautiful as your submission.
16:44OK. I'll try.
16:48On the nearby green, as always,
16:50the wildcards are doing it their way.
16:53So, Chris, there are 50 wildcards
16:55and 49 of them are looking that way. Yeah.
17:00What's wrong with the bridge?
17:01It's getting a bit crowded that way, really. Right.
17:03So I thought, well, I'll have a go doing something completely different.
17:06Yeah? He doesn't like to follow the crowd.
17:08Yeah, I can see that. You like to walk your own path. Indeed.
17:15When I saw the picture, I thought, my goodness,
17:17you know, we gave you this enormous bridge,
17:19and what have you done? You've done this tree.
17:21But when I look up from where you're sitting,
17:23you're absolutely spot-on. That tree is phenomenal.
17:25It's a very nice tree. Yeah.
17:27I mean, I have snuck the bridge in the corner.
17:29I'm not ignoring where you've put us. Yeah.
17:31Even though I was tempted.
17:34You have an interest in skies, by the looks of it.
17:37I like a sky. I don't really like a bridge, if I'm completely honest.
17:40Well, that's a little unfortunate,
17:42as we've plonked you next to one of the most famous bridges in the world.
17:45I know. I'm just looking at the view that he had while he was building it.
17:48OK. I feel like he's in Botkingdon, Brunel.
17:50I feel like he's here, and you've gone, yeah, great bridge.
17:53Anyway, look at that sky.
18:00With the wildcards being contrary, back in the pods,
18:04things are decidedly more black and white.
18:08What I'm working with today is charcoal.
18:11I like working tonally, so there's no colour to worry about.
18:16And I like working in a lot of detail,
18:19so four hours is going to be an interesting challenge.
18:23Using fine charcoal pencils,
18:25Ian Cox's meticulous portrayal of Blackator cops in Devon
18:29took over 100 hours to complete.
18:33Needing to drastically reduce his working time today,
18:36he's come armed with a secret weapon.
18:40When I look at your submission,
18:42the level of detail and the sharpness of focus,
18:44I would never have guessed
18:46that it starts with this level of looseness and fuzziness.
18:49Well, actually, I kind of need to explain that a bit.
18:52What I'm working with today is charcoal dust,
18:55and it means I can work on quite a large scale
18:58and cover quite a lot of the work relatively quickly.
19:02And what I'll do as the thing goes on, hopefully,
19:05is to start using finer and finer charcoal pencil.
19:08Yeah. I mean, it's so impressionistic, in a way, isn't it?
19:11I mean, is that what you're trying to capture at this stage,
19:14a sense of the mood and the moment? That's right.
19:23I'm a very precise painter.
19:27I think you would know one of my paintings from the detail.
19:32And also, with the small areas of flat colour,
19:35it's a bit like an old-fashioned travel poster.
19:40Despite living in the pastoral perfection of the Cotswolds,
19:44Charlotte Kenyon prefers to tackle cityscapes and architecture.
19:49Her gouache painting of a section of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope
19:53was completed using her signature detailed brushwork and opaque tones.
20:01So, we loved your submission, Charlotte.
20:03You show us something that's so profoundly man-made,
20:06but then this lovely sense of nature,
20:08I mean, really just with that raking light, those gorgeous shadows.
20:11Yes, there's October, so it's very autumny light.
20:14Well, you're getting those lovely flat tones at the moment.
20:17Is this how you always work?
20:18Yes, I have always been a meticulous painter.
20:21And gouache forces you to be a bit more formal
20:23because of the opaque nature of it, I think, yeah.
20:40Where I can lose myself is when I start working on the detail.
20:44So, it's kind of working across the whole canvas,
20:46kind of fairly evenly, so that I don't get caught out by time.
20:54The bridge, it might be a little bit too simple,
20:58so I've elevated the bridge to lift it up against the landscape.
21:03Personally, I don't think it's too dramatic, but we'll see.
21:14My stated aim at the beginning was to give the end of the bridge
21:17a bit of weight.
21:19It's still got a way to go yet,
21:21and plenty of opportunity for me to do something horrendous to it.
21:39From their precipitous position overlooking the Avon Gorge,
21:43eight artists are depicting Bristol's famous Clifton Suspension Bridge.
21:49And as the halfway point approaches,
21:51are they happy with the decisions they've made so far?
21:55Spent so long working out the bend and perspective of that balustrade,
22:01I've got to admit I'm finding the stonework tricky, really tricky.
22:08Still got quite a lot of marks to make.
22:11Quite stippling with my paintbrush.
22:13What could still go wrong?
22:15Not finishing it?
22:21What was it that you didn't really like about this?
22:23I'm here to be your kind of painting therapist.
22:25You work through all the problems and then you won't repeat them.
22:28I wasn't happy with, you know, the pillar.
22:31It sort of looked like it had deflated somewhat.
22:33Yeah, OK. A bit like myself.
22:36Listen, I think you need to fall in love with your new picture,
22:39and you can make up for the time, I'm sure you can.
22:41Yeah, exactly. Right, thanks, Sarah McKade.
22:44My pleasure, my pleasure. I'll send you my bill later.
22:46OK.
22:55So how do you think it's going?
22:57I'm just a bit surprised that we've got this incredibly wide thing
23:02going across this very deep gorge,
23:04and so many of them are focusing on the one tower.
23:08Paintings have such different feelings. It's extraordinary.
23:11So Chris has given us a portrait form, one tower.
23:15How's he doing?
23:17What I would say is that he needs to look a little bit harder
23:20because there's something about the shape of the tower
23:22that he's not quite got that feels a bit lightweight to me.
23:24I think it's because I sort of think the opposite.
23:26I quite like the fact that Chris doesn't really worry himself
23:29too much about the perspective and the geometry,
23:31and I worry that if he kind of overworks
23:33exactly how that piece of architecture is,
23:36he'll lose the sense of how it feels.
23:38Ian's submission was full of detail.
23:40We're not going to get that level of detail today, are we?
23:43No, that submission was 100 hours.
23:45The thing that I'm slightly worried about with Ian
23:47is that he's already getting quite fussy,
23:49and we're only at lunchtime. I don't think he can really help himself.
23:51Having said that, I like the composition.
23:53You do get the expanse and the emptiness and the right,
23:55so it's all there.
23:57Charlotte seems to find an elegance in architecture, doesn't she?
24:02Yeah, I think it's interesting you use the word elegant.
24:04I would use polite. It's very polite.
24:07Oh, that's such a good word.
24:08You're looking at me like, you don't like it, do you?
24:10I do like it.
24:11No-one crosses continents to see something polite.
24:14Um...
24:16Maybe not, maybe not,
24:18but I think I would like to see something a bit...
24:21A bit ruder?
24:22Yeah, a bit... You want it to be a bit more rude?
24:24I want her to get into it a little bit more.
24:26The gouache is used for illustration, it's precision, it's flatness.
24:29I think Charlotte's work is very...
24:31Actually, correct, but not particularly exciting.
24:33Look at Ciarán's two works of art, his submission, what he's doing today.
24:37You're invited to this empty place and it's not the main attraction.
24:41It's like, no, don't look at that, just follow me.
24:44Have a look in there.
24:46Yeah, Ciarán loves the depths, doesn't he?
24:49He wants to go right, right down there.
24:51I love the way it's coming together.
24:53I think it's rich, it's deep, it's full of story.
24:56I think Ciarán's found an elegant solution
24:59to giving us the sense of the verticality.
25:02My problem is the greens he's using, they're very, very flat,
25:05so I think he's got to start finding differentiation.
25:08Jonathan is giving us that kind of wide-angle distortion thing.
25:13He's got the sweep of the balustrade,
25:15you've got more of the expanse of the bridge,
25:18but I just feel like he's got so much left to do.
25:21I worry that these big brushes,
25:23I've started to not look at the sort of splendour of that drawing,
25:27I'm looking at the chunkiness of the paint marks.
25:30Jo is bringing some swirly, psychedelic...
25:34Are you having a good trip or a bad trip when you look at her work?
25:37I think it's like a tapestry.
25:39The way Jo puts things together, it's like, you know,
25:42she's taken little bits of textile and sewn them all together.
25:46Funny enough, with Jo, I think she has got the sense
25:49of looking up at this rather monumental structure.
25:52The colour is turned up to beyond 11,
25:54but the actual place, I am there, I feel it.
25:57Then we have Dan and Till.
25:59Dan started one, she binned it, moved on to a second one.
26:04I think Dan put so much of herself in the picture
26:06that if she's not feeling that painting, it's going nowhere.
26:09The second one feels much more spirited.
26:11I love the way Dan puts paint down, she's not afraid of it,
26:14but the tower takes up a central position on quite a small canvas
26:17and it's kind of simple.
26:19She's got to work a bit more with it.
26:21Sarah has the tower on an inverted pyramid hanging in the air.
26:26Yeah.
26:27Is the hovering bothering?
26:29Ooh!
26:30Yeah, it is the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
26:33It's just in a very radical language.
26:35I hope she can pull it off.
26:37It'll give me more geometric shapes,
26:39incredibly sort of hallucinatory colours, and I'm very happy.
26:44But when it comes to judging,
26:46it's a very different way of treating landscape
26:49and to judge that against the others, I think, will be very tricky.
27:03You're lost in a world of trees, but toned it right down.
27:07I mean, what I'm looking at is a lot brighter
27:09and in your world, everything's always a little bit darker.
27:12Yeah, I think it's just the palette I use, I've always used.
27:15I think I tend to desaturate a little bit.
27:18It kind of gives it quite a moody quality.
27:20Yeah.
27:21Do you think there's a danger of overworking it?
27:23Totally, 100%. Yeah, yeah.
27:29That's invigorating. Terps nose. Thanks, Assistant.
27:37I love that bridge, but what's that behind it?
27:39Yeah, it's a bit of a halo,
27:41just to sort of say that this is the star of the show.
27:44Right.
27:45This is what you want to look at.
27:47OK.
27:48Not look like.
27:49You don't want to look like a bridge.
27:53The star of today's show, Clifton Suspension Bridge,
27:56is one of the UK's most famous architectural landmarks.
28:02But designed in 1831 by the 23-year-old Isambard Kingdom Brunel,
28:07from the outset, its construction was beset by problems.
28:12Isambard was completely obsessed with detail,
28:15but it was really bad with finance,
28:17and so the project kept running out of funds.
28:21In 1843, work on the bridge was abandoned.
28:25It was called by many a monument to failure.
28:29The only parts that had been constructed
28:31were the stone towers and the abutments.
28:34When Brunel died in 1859,
28:36he was one of Britain's most celebrated engineers,
28:39having designed the world's first ocean liner,
28:42the first bridges and the Great Western Railway,
28:45but with the project he called his first love unfinished.
28:49When Brunel died,
28:51the engineering community wanted to complete it as a memorial to him.
28:55So two engineers, John Hawkshaw and William Henry Barlow,
29:00who were working on demolishing Brunel's Hungerford footbridge in London,
29:04took Brunel's chains from that bridge
29:06and raised the funds to install them here
29:09on this bridge with Brunel's original parts.
29:13Finally completed in 1864, today the bridge is a Bristol icon
29:18and is currently undergoing a repaint,
29:21though fortunately there's no four-hour time limit to worry about.
29:31Back on the green, the wildcards are nearing the end of their day's painting.
29:40Charmaine, you've got this sort of vorticism thing going on in the sky
29:44with all the fragmentation of the clouds.
29:46We've had a day where it's been grey at times
29:49and then you've had a flash of blue and the sun comes out right now,
29:52so I've tried to embody a bit of everything into it.
29:55Well, I love what you've done. It's a very strong piece.
30:00Hello, Charlotte. Hello.
30:02Look at the bold and beautiful colours.
30:04Yes, I like using the primary colours mostly
30:07and as little black and white as possible.
30:09Fair enough. Have you chatted to many of the other artists?
30:12I have, yeah. Everyone's really, really lovely.
30:14Painting's quite solitary some of the time,
30:16so being in a massive group of people is really nice.
30:22It's now up to the judges to select their favourite work.
30:32Yeah, that doesn't look too bad.
30:34I must say that you're a rather marvellous painter.
30:37Really?
30:39And it's Rose Dufton's portrait of a tree,
30:42with the bridge in a supporting role that has their vote.
30:46You have a really nice way of putting paint down
30:48and it was kind of that sunny part of the day
30:50where everything was sort of just vibrating.
30:52It's just very delicate and very sort of evocative of today,
30:56so well done.
30:57Thank you so much.
30:59No, no, well, it's been a pleasure watching you work.
31:02I am feeling shocked, very happy,
31:06and, like, it's not real.
31:08Am I allowed to say I'm going to have a big glass of wine?
31:11Oh, yeah.
31:13OK, it might be a bottle of wine.
31:17Rose from Leeds will go into a pool of wildcard winners
31:21to be in with a chance of a pod in the semi-final.
31:25Back on the terrace,
31:27our pod artists have entered the final hour of the competition.
31:32I'm worried about getting a finished picture.
31:36I'm having to use bigger brushes
31:39and not take quite so long fussing over the colours.
31:45What I've been doing for the last hour or so
31:49is I've been trying to get a nice,
31:52what I've been doing for the last hour or two
31:55is putting leaves on the trees.
31:58I'd like another kind of 12 hours,
32:01but as it stands, I wouldn't be totally embarrassed.
32:07I am finally going to try and sort the trees out.
32:11I can still do something calamitous to it,
32:15in which case it's going in the Avon gorge.
32:23Above the Avon gorge,
32:25eight artists are approaching the end
32:27of their Clifton Suspension Bridge challenge.
32:31Actually make that nine artists.
32:34And Till, he's got his own pod.
32:37I know. I mean, look at that.
32:39Is his relationship to art, you know, does he work at it like you?
32:43No, I wish I had less of my struggle and more of his.
32:47It's a laissez-faire.
32:50I have a few more textures to add,
32:53and I think then I'll just go in with an accent colour
32:56to sort of pull it together.
32:58There's a slight twinge of panic, but I'm keeping my cool.
33:05The masking tape is there to stop the dust
33:08from getting onto the white border of the pavement.
33:11I'm going to do the same thing on the other side.
33:15The masking tape is there to stop the dust
33:18from getting onto the white border of the paper.
33:21Yeah, it's not perfect, but it's OK. It'll be OK.
33:24I don't want to overwork the painting.
33:26I'd much rather underwork it than overwork it.
33:29But on the whole, it's OK.
33:31It's OK, I think.
33:39Artists, you have five minutes left.
33:42Five minutes.
33:46It would be quite easy to lose the light effect that I have.
33:49Just by overworking it, you know, it could be a complete disaster.
33:56I haven't put any highlights on the trees,
33:59so I'm going to just chuck those in,
34:01maybe make the shadows a bit deeper.
34:03But, yeah, just getting through it.
34:06If I had another two hours of time, I would use it,
34:09but a few minutes is not going to make any difference
34:12one way or the other.
34:15Right.
34:23If anything's gone right already.
34:32Artists, that is it.
34:34Please stop what you're doing and step away from your easels.
34:39What a day.
34:43I think today just reaffirmed my love for painting.
34:47Everyone's been really lovely, all the other artists are lovely,
34:51and it's just been a joy, really.
34:55Cringe, but true.
34:58Our winner today will be one step closer
35:01to the title of Landscape Artist of the Year,
35:04and a £10,000 commission for London's Courtauld Gallery.
35:08The prize will take them to the south of France,
35:11following in the brushstrokes of some of the true greats of Impressionism,
35:15like Claude Monet, whose visits to the region in the 1880s
35:19led to a radical transformation in his use of colour and light.
35:24What Monet learned to do while he was down there,
35:27which is apparent in this pine tree in Antibes,
35:31is how to use light to create atmosphere and distance.
35:35You've got the one tree, and between the shadow of the tree
35:39and the cool tones of the distant hills,
35:42he's created an atmosphere where you can actually smell the air.
35:46I mean, that is magical.
35:49The south of France, I mean, it's inspired so many artists
35:53to produce really revolutionary work.
35:55So we're looking for an artist who's willing to sort of really
35:59try and experiment as much as Monet did to produce something extraordinary.
36:05For now, in the south-west of England,
36:08the judges need to decide who will make it through to the semi-final.
36:12They start by narrowing the selection down to a short list of three.
36:18I think this is one of the strongest examples that we've had
36:21of we give the artists this really kind of iconic view,
36:25and they each give us eight very, very distinct pictures.
36:29What I find interesting about the tower is how some of them got it
36:32and some of them didn't.
36:34And when I look at sort of Chris's work,
36:36actually there's a lightness to his that isn't quite as rooted
36:39as I think he wanted it to be.
36:41I don't think you get that monumentality,
36:43but at the same time, I think the way that he's treated all the trees
36:46is so lively, and I think out of all of the artists today,
36:49he actually found the most dramatic shadows.
36:52In contrast, Ian's done something which is almost forlorn.
36:56I mean, this black-and-white noir scene
36:59of something that looks almost abandoned.
37:02I like the way Ian's tower is situated within the wooded hillside.
37:05I do miss that finesse in his submission,
37:08but it's a great sense of space.
37:12The longer I look at Charlotte's painting,
37:15it's got Chinese elements, doesn't it?
37:18Sort of that vertical scroll.
37:20I find it very illustrative, but there's a lot of invention in it as well.
37:23I think I underestimated Charlotte.
37:25It's not as tight as her submission, and I really like that looseness.
37:32With Kieran's work, he's taken us right down to the bottom.
37:36I'm lost in the story that sits around it.
37:39The observation of light and colour, I think, is really impressive.
37:43I mean, it's a very, very dramatic crop.
37:45Like, OK, you gave me this really famous bridge.
37:47I'll give you a tiny bit, I'll give you the feet.
37:50I mean, the kind of audacity of that.
37:55Jonathan, I mean, this is a sunny terrace
37:58in the south of France, isn't it?
38:00He's saying, give me the job!
38:02I think one of the artists who decided, let's give them the wits.
38:06I love the way he's used that fisheye to lead us into the space.
38:10The accomplishment of this drawing,
38:12it's so sophisticated, it's so clever,
38:14and then suddenly you feel like, I wouldn't walk across that bridge.
38:18It's too scary. You know, like, I need a bit more delineation.
38:23It didn't surprise me to learn that Jo studied textiles.
38:26Right, there we go.
38:27So, you know, she's broken it down into very organic shapes,
38:30so somehow it still holds true
38:32to the fact that it was foliage and trees behind.
38:35For me, this is the most beautiful bridge.
38:37That pale turquoise, the way that the light's falling on it,
38:40everything's just beautiful to look at.
38:46I'm really pleased that Dan had the courage to start again.
38:49She's given us a sky that feels full of feeling.
38:51You've got an artist who is the work,
38:53and you read that through the freneticism
38:56of the way in which the paint's applied.
38:58I think Dan's been incredibly successful
39:01of bringing herself into the work.
39:04Sarah's given us a kind of otherworldly version of today.
39:08But I don't buy the sun or whatever that is behind the tower.
39:12It just seems incongruous to me.
39:14That bit feels incongruous to you, not the inverted pyramid
39:17and the floating tower.
39:19The pyramid's great. It's such a clever, inventive thing.
39:22She was actually painting from life at some point,
39:25so a lot of coming together of disparate languages
39:28to make something remarkable.
39:30Maybe it's a painting of what this place will look like in 200 years.
39:33Yeah, the question, will you walk on a floating bridge in 200 years?
39:36With a lilac sky, yeah.
39:46Artists, thank you all for a terrific day.
39:49You've all worked incredibly hard.
39:51I hope you're all happy with what you've managed to achieve.
39:54The judges have decided on a shortlist.
39:57The judges have decided on a shortlist.
40:00The first artist is...
40:06..Kieran Guckian.
40:15The second artist on the shortlist is...
40:19..Joe Rance.
40:21APPLAUSE
40:27And the third artist is...
40:30..Sarah Harris.
40:32APPLAUSE
40:37Well done. Thank you.
40:41The judges must now choose today's winner.
40:44To help them decide, they take another look at the artists' submissions.
40:49Our picturesque valley and its Victorian bridge
40:52gave us a whole array of works of art today.
40:56Let's start with Jo, who gives us great colour.
40:59Yeah, it's really interesting seeing how similar her submission
41:02in today's painting is.
41:04The use of emptiness with textures,
41:06but then she matches them with this crazy sort of embroidered foreground,
41:10and it works.
41:11And I think what's really important, looking at Jo's two works together,
41:14is that you understand that this mark-making isn't decorative.
41:17There are a lot of subtleties in this that are quite literal.
41:20Are there? Yeah, I mean, I think, particularly under the bridge
41:23with the brown and the green trees,
41:25that's more literal than you would expect her to do
41:27if you looked at her submission, which is a little bit further out there.
41:31Kieran is very keen to direct our eye, it seems,
41:35in his paintings, in a certain way.
41:37His language is really full of narrative drama,
41:40but in a really quiet way.
41:42They're really enigmatic pictures.
41:44Taking on Caspar David Friedrich and the notion of the sublime,
41:47you know, the whole point of the sublime
41:49is that nature's supposed to be awe-inspiring,
41:52and that's why we have that sort of fearfulness
41:55when we look at his deep, dark gorges.
41:58So, Isabard Kingdom Brunel, I think,
42:01would have recognised his bridge in Kieran's picture today.
42:05What about Sarah's bridge?
42:07He would have recognised it in spirit.
42:09That's what he was trying to do.
42:10Isn't his bridge the squattest, heaviest, most secure?
42:13Don't worry about it, guys. This bridge has got you.
42:16Has that bridge got you?
42:17That tower is doing exactly that.
42:19You know, that is solid, and it's full of magic.
42:23And now I look at it side by side with the submission piece,
42:26I'm captivated by all those swirls
42:28and those patterns in the top right-hand corner.
42:30You know, Sarah's an artist who's really led by things
42:34that don't interest other artists.
42:37What interests me is that you take something like Joe's here,
42:41which clearly is not what we were looking at.
42:43Those colours weren't there, those shapes weren't particularly there.
42:46You know, she's taken what she sees and she's changed it.
42:49Yes. Because that's what interests her.
42:51And there comes a point where you change something so much,
42:55you either take people with you or you don't.
42:57So it's just where the artist decides to take us.
43:00In Joe's example, the things she's painting
43:02disintegrate into pattern and decoration.
43:04With Sarah, the things she's looking at
43:06disintegrate into symbolism and playing with form.
43:09Often leading the way.
43:11And, you know, that's what we would like our artists to do.
43:19Joe, Kieran, Sarah, congratulations on getting to this stage.
43:23It's a real achievement to get to the shortlist.
43:26But only one of you can go through to the semi-final.
43:30And that artist is...
43:33..Kieran Guckian.
43:43I'm in total shock, honestly.
43:45I was not expecting to win today.
43:48It's amazing, yeah.
43:50Well done. Thank you so much.
43:52It means everything, because it can be scarier times,
43:55you know, trying to do this full-time,
43:57and you can doubt yourself.
43:59Huge confidence boost, yeah.
44:01Absolutely. Yeah, wonderful.
44:03Thank you so much.
44:05Kieran's got a really strong grasp
44:08of what makes a really good landscape painting.
44:12He's got a really delicate touch,
44:14he's really good at composition,
44:16and he looks really, really hard.
44:18In sending our winning artist to the south of France,
44:21we're not looking for an artist that's going to repeat
44:24or imitate what's come before.
44:26And I think that really intense looking gives me a confidence
44:31that he can give us heat, dry lands, vineyards,
44:36mountains and blue sea.
44:38Very confident.
44:40If you'd like to take part in next year's competition
44:43or want to discover more about the work of our artists,
44:46visit skyartsartistoftheyear.tv.
44:50Next time, join us and eight new artists
44:54in the heart of London for our liveliest landscape ever.
44:58There's a lot going on.
45:00With four hours, it's tight.
45:02Who will keep their cool?
45:04What will be will be now, the die is cast.
45:07And who will let the pressure go to their head?
45:10I look forward to completing it without collapsing.
45:19¶¶
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