Tenth time fortunate for artist introduced as winner of portray prize
A
n artist who was impressed by the sunshine in a bike dealership has gained a portray prize on the tenth time of coming into.
Graham Crowley was named the winner of the John Moores Painting Prize by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool on Thursday, 47 years after he first entered the competitors.
His work Light Industry, impressed by his go to to a bike dealership, gained him the £25,000 prize for the primary time, though he has been shortlisted twice earlier than and served on the jury for the prize in 2008.
He mentioned: “The John Moores Painting Prize is without doubt the UK’s pre-eminent painting competition and exhibition.
“One of my ambitions, apart from painting the best paintings I possibly can, has always been to win.
“Exhibiting as part of the prize in the past has played a significant part in establishing my reputation as a painter.
“This is important as I, like most practising painters, am not represented by a gallery or commercial interest.
“The prize has an authoritative history of post-war painting in the UK, and its credibility and longevity are testament to the anonymous judging process. I am thrilled to be the first prize winner this year.”
Crowley painted the work after visiting the motorbike vendor in Framlingham, Suffolk, which he described as half workshop and half counter-cultural museum.
He mentioned: “What I found enthralling about the place was the light; a diffused, dusty kind of light that emanated from a grubby, obscured skylight.”
Jurors for this yr’s prize included The White Pube, the collaborative id of writers Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad.
They mentioned: “Graham Crowley’s painting is a rugged use of paint that manages to make a rugged scene absolutely glow; a blur of painting that makes memory and space momentarily lucid.
“In places, the monochromatic image ceases to be an image and paint and colour take over, which is very much the desired effect of a workshop – a haven we know all creatives are excited by.”
A document 3,357 work have been entered for this yr’s prize and have been whittled all the way down to a shortlist of 5, together with Social Murder: Grenfell In Three Parts by Nicholas Baldion, which tells the story of what occurred earlier than and after the 2017 fireplace.
Seventy of the artworks can be on show within the John Moores Painting Prize 2023 exhibition on the Walker Art Gallery from September 16 till February 25 subsequent yr.