Review: Episode 1 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2025 (Series 12)

What qualifies me to review this series? Well…. I’ve reviewed lots of exhibitions and
lots of art on television programmes in the last 20 years and every episode of every series of Portrait Artist of the Year since Series
4 in 2018.

If you’ve not yet watched and are not familiar with my posts, this review
continues in the same pattern as all the reviews I’ve written for the last
eight series.

The format is the same as always

• eight heats – with nine artists in each heat, creating portraits in four hours working three artists to one (usually celebrity) sitter
• semi finals
• finals
• commission / the winner’s story

This year’s portrait commission is for The Royal Society – the world’s oldest continuously operating scientific academy and home to leading scientists. It will mark the 80th anniversary in 2025 of the election of the first women Professors as members of the Royal Society.  The sitter will be the mathematician and broadcaster Professor Hannah Fry who was awarded the Royal Society’s David Attenborough Award and Lecture 2024 in recognition of her significant work in public engagement with science and for her prolific role in popularising mathematics. She is also the Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

That should present some challenges around providing context in the background!

 

As always the Judges for the series are the same as they’ve been from the
beginning: 

• Kathleen Soriano
  – who describes herself as Curator, Telly person, Museum/Gallery
  Advisor/Consultant, Qualified Coach, Chair Liverpool Biennial, Chair Art
  UK, National Trust Specialist Advisor
• Kate Bryan – who describes herself as Art Addict. Art TV presenter, curator, writer
  & mentor. Chief Art Director
  @sohohouse (She continues to do PAOTY but has bowed out of hiking around the UK
  for LAOTY)
• Tai-Shan Shierenberg – the British painter
  (I’ve put the link to his 2024 page of Heads new and old on his
  website)

As always, we will shout at them on the TV screen, take issue with their
decisions and I especially will highlight any complete art twaddle that comes
out of their mouths!

I have however noticed a new and renewed respect for the concept of “likeness”
in this first episode – of which more later.

Keep these faces in mind when you get to the portraits produced!

The three sitters in the first episode are as follows:

• Alex Jones
  (top right) – an author, podcaster and presenter of “The One Show” on BBC1
• Kyla Harris (bottom right) – a filmmaker, writer and activist who is also tetraplegic and uses
  a raised power chair. She is probably best known for co-creating and
  co-writing“We might regret this”, on BBC2/iPlayer, which she
  also acted in and produced.
• Yungblud (Bottom left) – is an English singer, songwriter and actor who has had two UK #1
  albums and over 6 billion Spotify streams

Episode 1: The Artists

The artists in Episode 1 on the steps of Battersea Arts Centre where the knockout heats are held

All the artists are listed below alphabetically by surname – but are
not differentiated between professional and amateur. The link to their main
‘contact’ site is embedded in their name and social media sites follow – if
available.

As always I’ve dug around online, and these profiles
provide more information than the programme does.

The mini bio
provided in the programme skips over some rather important information about
some of the participating artists.

• Edie Bound (Instagram) – b.2002 is originally from Wiltshire but now lives in South London. She
  did a foundation year at Camberwell School of Art and then chose to work at
  a ceramic studio whilst pursuing oil painting in her free time. 
• Natalie Charles
  (Instagram) – an artist based in London. She is a a Drawing Year 2023/4 alumnus
  from the Royal Drawing School. In 2025, she was selected for RBA Rising
  Stars, the Delphian Gallery Open Call and the Richard Ford Award, a funded
  residency at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
• Ian Dawber (Instagram) – He graduated from Wigan Art School in 1978 and then worked as a professional Graphic Designer/Illustrator in both Liverpool and Manchester agencies. He took up painting in later life and is an an elected member of the Society of Illustrators, Artist and Designers attaining Fellow membership. His portfolio includes an excellent portrait of Lenny Henry during the world record attempt. (He needs a proper website!)
• Ephraim Haywood (Instagram) – a charity worker from South London who specialises in drawing portraits and plants. (He’s very good at the latter) His self portrait involved merging three different drawings of himself.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ephraim (@ephraim.haywood)

• Alice Hesketh (Instagram) – very succinct to the point website tells me that she is 
• a graduate of Camberwell College of Art
• a fine artist who specialises in contemporary figurative paintings and drawings. 
• She has a studio in Eastbourne where she paints and teaches small art classes. 
• She also hosts portrait workshops, demos and events in and around East Sussex.
• Angel Mitov (Instagram) – a self-taught tattoo artist from Bulgaria – who speacialises in
  realistic tattoos – who came to the UK to study art in Glasgow
• Sonya Watt – an Executive Assistant from North London
• David Weekes (Instagram) – a retired financier from London who works solely from observation. He studied full time at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and completed a diploma in portraiture (with a portfolio that was highly commended by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters). He now works as an artist full time from a studio in South East London and enjoys painting a range of subject matter

Sonya Watt working on her painting of Alex Jones – with the crowd right behind her and a camera just behind her right ear!