BP Portrait Finalist, 2016
Over close to three decades working full time as an artist, it never gets easier. It can be lonely, frustrating and disappointing when you work countless hours on what you believe is an incredible painting, and yet it doesn’t sell. But there is also nothing like hearing news that you have received global recognition of your work.
In 2016 I was selected as a finalist in the BP Portrait awards at the National Portrait Gallery in London for my portrait of my daughter, Mila, then just seven. I found out I made the selection (one of just 2% of the 2557 entrants from over 80 different countries are chosen) in the early hours of the morning, resulting in my wife Gepke and I spending a sleepless night planning how we’d get there.
The BP exhibition itself lasts for a year, spending its first three months in London at the National Portrait Gallery, before touring to the Usher Gallery in Lincoln, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh and finally the New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, Leicester. The exposure is huge, with some 330,000 people attending the London leg alone each year.
The news of my inclusion in the awards followed a particularly tough year for our family with my brother-in-law Wayne dying of cancer the year before. The painting itself was an ode to fatherhood – exploring my role as a father in my own children’s lives and the father Wayne was and could no longer be to my nephews.
You can read more about it here: https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/mila-top-uk-show#:~:text=Simon%20Richardson’s%20portrait%20of%20his%20daughter%20Mila%20is%20believed%20to,award%20in%20the%20world”.