Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year.

My Day as a Wildcard

I applied to take part in the Sky Arts Landscape artist of the year. The process involves sending in an application with an image of one of your paintings. My work is quite diverse, and I found it quite tricky to decide what to send in. In hindsight, and a rather dramatic year later, I can’t actually remember which painting I sent in. After several months of waiting, I received an email to say I had not been picked. I was however invited to apply for the wildcard section. You have to have applied to the main show in order to take part in the wildcard. At a time and date, you have to send in an email to try to get a place. This time I had more success and managed to get accepted.

There would be 50 wildcards in my episode, so it would be busy. Especially as we were just coming out of the first lockdown and would all have to keep distanced.

My episode was to take place at West Wycombe Park in Buckinghamshire. The episodes are traditionally filmed at National Trust properties and parks. This generally offers magnificent parklands and classical buildings to paint. I was asked to arrive at 7am. This was going to be a long day. As a wildcard we would have to be totally self-sufficient. Due to the covid restrictions, there would be no café on site, not even anywhere to get a drink. We would have to take all painting stuff, chair, rain protection, food, drink and anything else we might need. There would also be no transport from the car park to the painting site so we would have to be able to carry everything.

On arrival at the car park it was already busy, and registration was under way. There was a huge variety of trolleys, festival trolleys, straps, backpacks and even a push chair. I decided to register before loading myself up. Registration involved getting a stamp on the back of your canvas or paper with the Sky Arts logo to confirm you had not prepared anything in advance. I got out of the car and had my first challenge. My knicker elastic went ping. I was wearing trousers, which fortunately held things up. This was going to be a challenging day. Thankfully, it was a glorious day, and no rain was forecast. One less stress to deal with.

Registration complete, and everything strapped to my trolley, we had to wait until everyone was there so we could all be escorted together to the wild card painting area. It would be about a half mile walk. En route I got chatting to some of the crew. There were many changes to accommodate distancing and sanitation requirements, but everyone was so excited that we were able to go ahead with the recording. It would be different, and have challenges, but we were there and it was happening.

West Wycombe park is a stunning National Trust property with many ornamental buildings, hidden temples and follies. It was a beautiful day, and there were views that could be paintings everywhere.

We all scattered around the field we had been allocated, which was next to a lake, with several buildings visible in different directions. I set myself up near the lake, where I could see a lovely boat shack and the music temple, a Doric temple that was used as a theatre. In the distance I could also see the pods where the main contestants were set up.

I had made the decision to create one of my deconstruction and reconstruction pieces. These involve painting a number of paintings of different views, then tearing them up before rearranging them on another piece of paper and painting them back together again. It will all make sense as I go along. I started with my sketchbook and sketched a few different views to get an idea of what I was going to do.

Initially I was drawn to the boat shed with a couple of rowing boats in it. I painted a small watercolour of it, followed by a watercolour of the music temple. During this time, I had been chatting to the crew who were constantly moving around the artists filming what was going on. I decided to turn around and do some sketches of the crew doing their job. They are a big part of the day behind the scenes, and I wanted to include them in the painting. I also drew some of the other artists at work. While painting the crew they noticed what I was doing so they turned the cameras on me, and we had a surreal moment of them filming me while I was drawing them. They mentioned that in all the years of the show, nobody had drawn them before. I drew Hannah and Gerry, the camera operative and the sound person. They were definitely going to be included in the painting.

Overall, we had 4 hours to do our paintings, so it was time to get on with the finished piece. Having told the crew what I was going to do, they asked if they could film me tearing the paintings up. It is always a dramatic moment when the ripping up starts. I like to leave about half the page free so I can paint the pieces back together. Once I have chosen where I am going to put them, and glued them down, I draw back onto the painting to link things together again. Then I have to paint the pieces back together again. This style of painting tells a story of the day, a kaleidoscope of my experiences.

This is the piece I enjoy, and I got lost in this part. A couple of hours disappeared very rapidly. Although the contestants were allowed to chat, it was only from a distance. Every now and then it was good to stretch your legs and have a look at what the others were painting. There was definitely some talent in the field that day. The judges came to talk to us from time to time too, but it was very difficult to judge what they were thinking about anybody’s work.

Then came the time to finish. The judges came and had a final look. Sadly, I didn’t get through to the next round. The wildcard that was chosen was the lady sitting next to me. More filming and lots of packing up back into the trolleys and bags. We were allowed to go and have a look at the artists in the pods as they had started later than us. I felt our view was better than the pod artists. We would have been able to stay to see the judging of the main contestants. But I didn’t. I wanted to enjoy the reveal on the program. Also, it had been a very long day and I had a long drive back to Norfolk.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable day, and would definitely try to take part again.