John Moores Painting Prize 2012

On Friday I visited the John Moores Painting Prize exhibition and I was impressed with a lot of the work on show. My favourite pieces (pictured below), were pieces that had movement, detail, colour, or variation, and   in my eyes these pieces were the winners. Hutcheson's piece was probably my favourite one - the smallest of my favourites but I loved the use of the running paint and the tonal blues covering over the head of the man in his gown, making the painting ambiguous.

I loved the feeling of movement in David Dipré's art work. The splashes of colour are intense and jagged and beautiful, and I would actually love to have this piece in my home. Sometimes I think painting can be unsuccessful  as it is relatively difficult to achieve perfection and for that reason you can either get amazing detailed works (see Peter Liversidge's work below, a painting of a letter), or amazing abstract works....or rough and undetailed painting works that almost look amateurish. 

The size of Pat O'Connor's work was impressive - it took up a whole wall on it's own and had so many parts to it that it was the one piece of work I really stood and looked at for a long while. There were so many aspects to catch my attention and a vast range of painting, from thin doodles, to intricate designs, to still lifes. It showed the skill that O'Connor has when it comes to painting and O'Connor deserved to win. 

The Winner?

The winner was Sarah Pickstone with 'Stevie Smith and the Willow', however I'm still undecided as to how I feel about this. After seeing the other artists exhibiting, I have to disagree that Pickstone's work was the best. There was a high level of  intricately detailed pieces that could have been more deserving of fully showing painting skills, and on the other hand there were some absolutely beautiful abstract works, but Pickstone's seemed to just be somewhere in the middle. I'm sure their was a justifiable reason for her win, but when I saw some of the runners up too...I'm not so sure. One runner up was just the plain letter 'M' painted onto a white canvas by Ian Law, and unfortunately for me I don't think that warrants a deserving place as a Painting Prize Runner Up. 

In the next couple of weeks I'm going to be going to some talks at the Walker Gallery regarding the John Moores Painting Prize, so maybe there I will hear some reasons as to why the winners won and also get some insight into the works. I'll let you know 

Dipré

Holland

Hutcheson

Liversidge

O'Connor