Painting Stow Gardens in Pouring Rain Challenge | Landscape Artist of the Year UK

[00:00:03]Battling the great British weather here at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, our eight contestants are halfway through their landscape [music] challenge.

[00:00:11]In just under two hours, the judges will have to choose a winner. So, how do they think the competition's going so far?

[00:00:21]The rains have come. How does it affect the day? When it's raining, you hope the sky is going to be a bit lively, but even the sky is a bit of a a flat gray.

[00:00:29]So, it's it's difficult. I think they've done quite well with what they've got because they've had to use elements from the landscape rather than use light and shade. It'll work very well for John because he actually painted and then he washed it all away. I've seen his three pictures come to life, almost look finished, and then somehow 2 seconds later, it's back where it was before.

[00:00:48]It's about getting a sense of the landscape through mixing and melting all those colors together. It seems like a quite a perverse technique. It's like it's got a witch's cauldron and they just sit there stirring it and stirring it, waiting for the magic to happen.

[00:01:02]What about Richard? I just love the way he puts paint on and in the subtlety of tones he's creating distance. Um what we loved about his submission, of course, was the the conceptual idea of taking a landscape and reproducing it as a still life. And he hasn't played with those ideas and I wonder is it going to be special enough?

[00:01:22]What about Nikki? At the moment, I don't like it as much as I like her submission. It feels like what she's doing at the moment is a bit clunky in comparison. I don't know that that that color palette and that composition are doing anything particularly interesting, but it might just be that it's so unfinished. Okay, Moira, how's the wool going? It's not an easy thing to do outdoors. I mean, I didn't really comprehend how she made it, but there's all this wet and dry process that she's got to go through. Well, the washing is the way of meshing it together, rather like you know, you put a sweater in the washing machine and it gets all fibrous.

[00:01:53]That's what she's trying to do with the washing. I mean, there's obviously a huge degree of skill and experience in knowing if she puts that there, when she washes and rolls it, it's going to create that effect. Which, you know, really can't be underestimated that level of skill.

[00:02:09]>> [music] >> I've rinsed the felt out of the felted painting. So, now I'm going to just put it in the spinner to hopefully get it as dry as we possibly can.

[00:02:30]And dry.

[00:02:31]>> [laughter] >> Ish.

[00:02:37]But unfortunately for Tom, keeping his silk painting dry isn't quite as easy.

[00:02:44]Well, it's run a bit in the Run a bit.

[00:02:47]But you know what?

[00:02:49]It's not an unpleasant effect, is it? Do you think? Okay, it's You hate it. I have to be polite, don't I?

[00:02:56]With silk, no matter how much ink you put on it, it's not going to change the effect, really. Maybe this is a happy accident.

[00:03:09]The lush unbridled gardens, the woodlands and rivers running through Stowe, look as if they've always been here. But appearances can be deceptive.

[00:03:21]Stowe [music] is a completely fake garden. It's a naturalistic picturesque looking informal landscape, but it's completely contrived and created by lots and lots of people.

[00:03:31]The gardens we see now at Stowe were created by Lord Cobham, who inherited the estate in 1697.

[00:03:38]At the time, the fashion was for the formal French parterres, influenced by the grand gardens of Versailles.

[00:03:45]However, Cobham's vision was to create a new kind of natural looking garden.

[00:03:53]>> [music] >> He wasn't afraid of just losing the landscape that was there and starting again on his idea of creating what was the beginnings [music] of the English landscape movement. Enabling this new informal landscape was the latest technological invention, the ha-ha. It's a very clever feature that [music] sinks a retaining wall into the landscape so that your sheep or your cows cannot enter your garden, but looking out, you've got an uninterrupted view that almost joins your garden into the wider countryside.

[00:04:20]In 1741, [music] Lord Cobham entrusted the grounds into the hands of his head gardener, Capability Brown. He implemented and developed Cobham's vision, creating a seemingly natural, but in fact, entirely man-made pastoral paradise of elegant sweeping valleys, expansive lakes, and gentle woodland.

[00:04:41]This style of landscaping not only made Capability Brown's reputation, but also set the template for the archetypal English style of garden.

[00:04:50]I think Stowe is the most influential [music] landscape garden, possibly in Europe.

[00:04:55]So, it's a a product that the English invented and this model of a garden that's completely different to anything that went [music] before it.

[00:05:01]Nearly 300 years after their creation, the gardens of Stowe endure as if made by nature herself.

[00:05:14]Suffering for their art in the day's downpour are our intrepid wildcard artists.

[00:05:21]As the judges don their most stylish outerwear, they have to decide which of today's 50 not easy.

[00:05:31]I really like the guy over there with the kind of big >> [music] >> dark modernist painting.

[00:05:34]>> Deep purples.

[00:05:35]>> Yeah, with the lights going through.

[00:05:36]Yeah, that was the one that was pretty.

[00:05:38]Did you see the lady with the ink? The ink is fantastic. I really like that one. I like the the width, the the composition. Yeah, yeah. And the idea of closeness which she's got with the trees on the right and the and the temple on the left.

[00:05:49]>> Up the up the up the building on the left. No, she's [music] got that's great.

[00:05:52]>> been ambitious, you know, to work with ink on that scale is really, really good. A lot of people working big. Yeah.

[00:05:57]>> [music] >> Hello. Hello.

[00:06:04]Myself and my wonderful fellow judges have all decided that we'd really like you to be the wildcard today. Wow. Well done.

[00:06:12]Thank you.

[00:06:13]>> [applause] [music] >> Portsmouth-based artist Kim Whitby will now enter a pool of wildcard winners, from which one will be selected by the judges to take part in the semi-final.

[00:06:31]It's not just materials and equipment our artists bring with them. Friends and family are often part of the kit, too.

[00:06:40]Peter, so you're Richard's dad. That's right, yeah. And when did you realize you'd got a an artistic talent in the family? I think when he was around two, uh he started to draw then and quite well.

[00:06:54]And he's had a pencil in his hand ever since. I don't think I'd give a 2-year-old a pointy old pencil.

[00:07:00]>> You took the risk and it's paid off.

[00:07:01]That's right, yeah. What he's done is he's painted quite an accurate representation of the landscape, which we don't get very often. It's quite a novelty approach on this show.

[00:07:12]>> [bell] >> I'm interested to know whether you remain an optimist and whether that 1 in of blue sky is going to remain. It's there to stay. Okay.

[00:07:25]How do you know when to stop?

[00:07:28]Um well, fundamentally, when it's all blocked in. Is there one part, for example, that you're just absolutely not going to touch in the last half an hour because you don't want to disrupt what you've already done? There's there's nothing that I'm particularly precious about. Right. So, you'll let it keep evolving right up until the last minute.

[00:07:43]>> Yeah. Okay.

[00:07:48]Today, our artists are using a range of tools to create different effects and textures.

[00:07:53]But Nikki likes to incorporate Mother Nature.

[00:07:56]I often take my watercolors and I just chuck them. I'm going to chuck it.

[00:08:02]Right. Now, this has got grass, it's got stuff.

[00:08:06]It makes it more interesting. It stops the human hand being the controlling thing, you know, nature's the the the force, isn't it? Not The artists have just 30 minutes left to complete their [music] landscapes.

[00:08:28]At the moment, I'm needle felting, which is how I add [music] finer detail and a bit of shading.

[00:08:35]I think it's going okay.

[00:08:41]The fabric's so damp, [music] but it's not looking uh disastrous.

[00:08:47]Put a bit of darker color on it, it might bring it up a bit.

[00:08:58]It's always been a balance [music] between the tree and the building, but I want the tree to win. Okay.

[00:09:06]I'm just getting to the point where I'm hoping I can start playing with it by putting some color and more of different effects onto it.

[00:09:15]I knew this was a challenge.

[00:09:17]A bit longer, another couple of days would have probably helped, but there you go.

[00:09:25]As far [music] as time goes, it may well be that I'm sort of tinkering. I think that I'm on schedule. [music] I don't want to tempt fate.

[00:09:44]Here in the stately gardens of Stowe in Buckinghamshire, our eight artists are in the very last moments of their landscape challenge.

[00:09:52]It's very subtle. It is very subtle.

[00:09:56]It looks like light hitting the pillars, doesn't it? The off-white cotton. Yeah.

[00:10:00]Try not to snag my poncho. [laughter] I don't want to be incorporated into your art.

[00:10:11]>> [snorts] >> I'm reasonably happy. Working wet and wet will allow me to maybe sort of tie things together with final brush [music] strokes that bring the whole into into one.

[00:10:28]Tired around the eyes now. Yeah. And sore in the feet. [music] >> Yeah. So, good that it's nearly over.

[00:10:40]Artist, you have just 5 minutes left.

[00:10:48]>> [music] >> I'm really just putting the final touches on as [music] much as I possibly can. Not worried about little tiny bits of it, but how how's the whole thing working as a composition?

[00:11:09]So, I suppose the big question is which is the one? I'm still undecided.

[00:11:15]One of the two end ones, possibly.

[00:11:22]>> Artists, your 4 hours are up.

[00:11:26]Please stop what you are doing and step away from your work.

[00:11:32]>> [applause] [music] >> It's the judges who make the final decision on the day's winner, but before their deliberations, [music] some art-loving onlookers share their thoughts. That's really nice, isn't it?

[00:11:51]>> Yes.

[00:11:51]>> and light. A lot of things today have been rather dark.

[00:11:55]The gloom and the weather.

[00:11:58]>> [music] >> I only got as far as the sky.

[00:12:01]Yeah, beautiful colors, yeah.

[00:12:05]I actually walk my dogs every day here, and that's a really unusual perspective cuz it actually looks [music] like, you know, something's moving as if like a train's sort of going past.

[00:12:17]To help the judges select [music] today's winning artist, they first reduce the eight artworks to a short list of three.

[00:12:25]It's a pity that Tom lost out against the rain a bit.

[00:12:29]>> he was a bit concerned that it started to fall into sort of batik style, but actually I thought it was much closer to Italian marbling or something.

[00:12:36]>> I loved his formality, the way in which he approached the bridge front and center. That was the hero. I still think he's got a great mood to it.

[00:12:45]What will I take away today? Um not to paint in the wet and not to do silk outside, I think.

[00:12:56]I really like this. It's one of those brilliant moments in this competition where someone has really taken the time to plan everything through and then allows it to all come together in the final hour, and this is exactly what she's done. The colors through it are beautiful, and as it goes towards the bridge you get those bits of pink that, you know, are reflections of the I think overall it's nicely balanced.

[00:13:15]>> no, I like it. I wouldn't say that the piece is the best painting I've ever painted. [music] However, the piece is raw and expresses the emotions and the the weather conditions of the day, and that I find quite exciting.

[00:13:34]I think it's a painting of great dynamism. At no point did he respond to the landscape. I think the paintings, the three of them, took over.

[00:13:42]And he was responding to what was happening on the painting, which is no bad thing. I think it gives the the actual structure and the composition and the and the surface great vitality, but um I thought we wanted our artist to respond a bit to the landscape.

[00:13:54]>> I mean, what it does as an abstracted image is that the more time you spend with it, the more you start to impose a view on it. So, you can suddenly see a tree over there or a figure in the left-hand side, but who knows?

[00:14:06]Miserable, filthy weather. It sort of helped. It's a like a dappling effect on the sky and the foreground, which I was quite pleased with.

[00:14:21]I just love the thickness of the paint, the way it's put on. It's thick enough so you can see the directions of the marks, how they lead you across the structure of the tree, and each tree has its own personality. I love that tree at the back.

[00:14:34]>> I find it a little bit muddy, a little bit uninteresting. No.

[00:14:39]But, you know, he did actually get a good sense of the place today.

[00:14:43]I don't think that there's anything that I could have necessarily done differently. My main concern was just about framing the composition right.

[00:14:51]Maybe the sweep that I took in was a bit sort of general.

[00:14:59]Well, who would have thought the most painterly thing in the whole run today isn't paint at all.

[00:15:05]It's actually this fantastic felt. I love the light emanating from behind the hill and that the distance. I mean, I can't believe she can get that much distance with wool. I just think it's great to have such a distinct medium and then also to have a really distinct aesthetic. You know, she creates this fantasy land. It's like Tim Burton, slightly gothic, it's slightly naive.

[00:15:27]It's a wonky, dark rendering of this landscape.

[00:15:30]There's always things you think oh, I wish I'd done this or done that, but actually doing it outdoors in sort of all sorts of weather. So, I think considering all that, I'm quite happy with the outcome.

[00:15:47]If I look at those three, I think it's a strong >> That looks so good. I think that they're all doing something really different.

[00:15:52]Those two I think are fantastic.

[00:15:55]Amazing.

[00:15:55]>> second one looks so much better from a distance. After much deliberation, the judges picked their shortlisted three.

[00:16:04]And the first of those artists is Nicky Hennen.

[00:16:12]>> [applause] >> And the second IS RICHARD ALLEN.

[00:16:19]>> [applause] [applause] >> AND THE THIRD ARTIST TO BE shortlisted is Moi Mc Kay.

[00:16:33]>> [applause] >> WELL DONE, EVERYBODY ELSE.

[00:16:40]>> [applause] >> THE standard has been enormously high.

[00:16:43]Not disappointed by the result. As long as I walked away and the work I produced I thought was of a good standard that I like.

[00:16:50]That was fine by me.

[00:16:53]Before they decide who will win a place in the semi-final, the judges take the opportunity to look at the work the shortlisted three have produced today alongside their submissions.

[00:17:04]Let's start with Moi. I much prefer what she did today to her submission. I think it's got more sophistication. It's got this kind of gothic noir element to it which works better. The abstract qualities of her natural form work really well, and then we come to the buildings and it doesn't quite work, I don't think. I completely agree with you, but there are moments like that tree on the left-hand side, which is just tremendous. She's a fantastic artist. There are reflective passages under the bridge. I don't even know how she's done it with the wool.

[00:17:33]It's quite nice to have the opportunity [music] to speak out for wool and textiles as an art form.

[00:17:40]To Richard. We really got to explore the way that he painted today, the way he comes at things in an almost counterintuitive way. So, he's building this tree, but he's using zigzag lines.

[00:17:50]It really does have a completeness about it, and that muddiness that we see in the foreground, I think is as much about giving us that sense of distance so that the foreground is almost a hazy blur, and and the eye's focus is very sharply taken to the back. So, I I think it's the way in which he's using the paint to describe perspective.

[00:18:13]There's plenty of things that that can go wrong in a process like that, so just uh grateful to make it through to the final three.

[00:18:21]Nicky's work, the only one with a great seascape in the foreground. I was slightly surprised by such different treatment of water today. I think I expected that to be her style of treating water and to see the lake described in a similar way. The first one was made in the studio, and I wonder whether it was made from a photograph.

[00:18:41]Whereas what I think the painting lives off today is her struggle to find the form and the textures in the landscape, and it makes it richer for that.

[00:18:50]I find this really difficult because we've got three really good artists.

[00:18:55]Really good. I'm absolutely thrilled that I've got this far. Didn't think I would, but it's it's it's a lovely feeling.

[00:19:04]Moi, Richard, Nicky, congratulations on reaching the shortlist, but you know, when it's down to three, it's a really tough [music] decision, and there can only be one winner.

[00:19:16]Yes, and that winner is Richard Allen.

[00:19:24]>> [applause] >> Well done.

[00:19:31]Well [cheering and applause] done. Well done.

[00:19:35]It's more than I could have hoped for.

[00:19:37]It's great.

[00:19:39]I texted my wife, I've texted [music] my mother, my father. Needed no encouragement and and still on [music] the stage.

[00:19:50]Congratulations.

[00:19:52]It was a really difficult today, but ultimately we picked Richard because we just fell in love with the way that he was able to manipulate [music] pain and for it to be so expressive, but also so representational. It was unusual. It's actually quite subtle, and we're absolutely fascinated [music] to see what he can do with that moving forward.

[00:20:08]>> [applause] >> It feels amazing. Um I feel elated, [music] but truly truly tired.

[00:20:15]Next is [music] the semi-final.

[00:20:24]>> [music]