Young Artists’ Work Selected for RSBA National Competition
Members of The Arts Society Henley again this year visited A level exhibitions of local schools with a view to submitting digital photographs of art work to a national competition run by the Royal Society of British Artists and The Arts Society. This annual event is highly competitive and prestigious. For example, last year there were 272 entries of which 20 were chosen to have their work exhibited in the Mall Galleries and the Royal Overseas League in Spring 2018.
Liz Jarvis, Youth Art Committee Member said, “This year we visited Henley College, The Piggott School at Wargrave and a new addition, Shiplake College. One of the criteria for the selection of the art works to be submitted for the competition is that they are considered to be of the highest quality. Our selected artists this year are Lizzy Scales from The Piggott School and Will Parton from Shiplake College. We all agreed that their work more than satisfied this criterion.”
Lizzy’s paintings are Young Girl with Old Pearl Earring and Modern Day Dandy. Both paintings used oil and acrylic on canvas and showed very different painting styles.
Lizzy said “Drawing has always been a part of my life style starting off with Disney characters and moving on to complex pieces”.
This coming year Lizzy is going to study archaeology and ultimately would like a career in facial reconstruction which would combine her interest in science and art.
Will’s piece is entitled Mind. With this self-portrait, using acrylic on Perspex housed in a light box, Will uses varying colours of phased LED lighting to define his mood at any one time, thus raising awareness of the stress levels during school and the pressure of trying to achieve a certain grade.
Will said “my love of colour came at a young age creating firework paintings at primary school, progressing to coloured portraits and thus capturing emotion”.
Will’s goal is to continue his interest in abstract coloured artwork, ultimately studying art at university.
Lizzy and Will were presented with a certificate and a cheque at the September meeting of The Arts Society Henley at Phyllis Court Club.
The prizes were presented by our lecturer of that day, Leslie Primo, a distinguished art expert at both The National Gallery and The Courtauld Institute. It was an amazing coincidence the topic of his lecture that day was Vermeer, the painter of Girl with a Pearl Earring, which had inspired one of Lizzy’s paintings.
The Arts Society will announce the results of their competition next month and the winners will have their work exhibited alongside established British artists at the Royal Overseas League and the Mall Galleries in Spring 2019.
