BA Fine Art graduate in Sky Portrait Artist of the Year 2020

Francesca Currie, who graduated from BA (Hons) Fine Art in 2011, was selected to take part in the Sky Portrait Artist of the Year 2020. 

Hosted by actor and comedian Stephen Mangan, Sky Portrait Artist of the Year sees artists from around the country compete by painting celebrity portraits in just 4 hours. The overall winner claims a lucrative portrait commission for a British Institution and £500 worth of art materials.

Graduate Francesca Currie was chosen to take part in Series 7 of the show after submitting, and spent two months leading up to the competition practicing by painting a portrait each day. Francesca’s work combines the traditional techniques of the Old Masters with a modern viewpoint to create classical representational oil paintings with contemporary composition. 

Francesca painted Sir Trevor McDonald in episode 2 of the series, and was delighted that the newsreader and journalist chose her portrait to take home: “I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to get to paint Sir Trevor McDonald and even more thrilled that he took my portrait home.”

View more of Francesca’s work on her website and Instagram.