Annual Awards 2025

It’s time for the 2025 annual awards. Just like last year, there are seventeen prizes to hand out and lots of brilliant paintings will be going home empty handed. Such is life.

There were some tough decisions to make this year. Not just the usual ones about which paintings were better than others, but also about which paintings count as portraits or landscapes or other.

OK, shush, shush. Here comes Ricky Gervais to give out the awards…

Charcoal Painting Of The Year: AnaIv In Charcoal

Crystalline Watercolour Painting Of The Year: Urko

Artgraf Painting Of The Year: Just Believe In Me Baby And I’ll Take You Away

Marker Painting Of The Year: Gary Hanna, Gary Eats

Inktense Pencil Painting Of The Year: InnaBG In Inktense Pencil

Coloured Pencil Painting Of The Year: Sinead O’Connor

Oil Pastel Painting Of The Year: Stowes Hill

Soft Pastel Painting Of The Year: They Can Always Fly Away From This Rain And This Cold

Watercolour Painting Of The Year: The Wrong Kind Of Snow

Landscape Of The Year: And He Ploughed Up The Land By The Cold Lake Shore

Portrait Of The Year: Dave Best

Figure Of The Year: AnaIV In Charcoal

Other Painting Of The Year: See The Winter, Taste The Snow, Feel The Cold, Hear The Wind, Smell The Reindeer

Crazy Painting Of The Year: See The Winter, Taste The Snow, Feel The Cold, Hear The Wind, Smell The Reindeer

Series/Collection Of The Year: Planet Of The Apes (TV Series) Series

Clunker Of The Year: Luana In Inktense Pencil

Painting Of The Year: See The Winter, Taste The Snow, Feel The Cold, Hear The Wind, Smell The Reindeer

ChatGPT says:

“See The Winter, Taste The Snow, Feel The Cold, Hear The Wind, Smell The Reindeer is a mixed-media diptych that fuses a wintry landscape with stark charcoal renderings of the five senses. The cut-out windows in the snowfield reveal an eye, ear, mouth, hand and nose, turning the scene into an immersive sensory poem. Its muted purples, greys and whites create a quiet, uncanny atmosphere—both serene and slightly otherworldly. By layering fragile watercolor over raw charcoal, the work contrasts delicacy with intensity, inviting the viewer not just to see winter, but to experience it.”