Tootfinder

@smashtie@mas.to
2025-10-05 12:55:59

Here are my favourites from the National Portrait Gallery's Portrait Award 2025. It's a fantastic selection this year, and free to see as always.
#art #portraits #painting

Mother, by Diego José Aznar Remón

Composed in muted tones, with momentary flashes of pink, this portrait of the artist's wife and son shows them on an unkempt bed, the exhausted mother asleep, the baby awake and looking directly at the viewer. It is a moment of gorgeous intimacy.

The Echo - Self-Portrait, by Pippa Hale-Lynch

This self-portrait has the quality of a doubly exposed photograph, or one that has slipped and smudged in the process of development. Your eye slides over the detail, unable to lock on. Her face is pale, but with flushed cheeks, against a black background. The painting explores themes of solitude and grief stemming from the loss of her mother.

Ukrainian Girl, by Nelson Hernandez

A female figure with her back to the viewer stands at a window, through which shines a wintry light illuminating individual strands of her light blonde hair. Chilean artist Nelson Hernandez's spectral portrait of his Ukrainian friend, Kseniia, captures a brief moment in time: 'I was moved by her stillness as she gazed out the window. Suddenly, the drawing in her hoodie evoked in me a scene of war, a metaphor of her past and the burden she carries.'

Portrait of a Sculptor, by Dide

Blasting out bright red, the surface of Dide's portrait of the sculptor Laurence Edwards seems alive with a kinetic, electric energy. The sculpture sits in a brightly patterned armchair, looking directly at the viewer, with legs crossed and grubby boots prominent. It explores 'the messy plaster-splattered existence of artists in their studios'.