(dramatic music) - Hello, welcome to the spectacular gardens of Stowe in Buckinghamshire, where we've gathered together eight prodigiously talented landscape artists.

- And as well as their paints and brushes, they brought with them draft excluders, irons, kettles, tea strainers, hair dryers, whisks, everything but the kitchen sink.

- Welcome to "Iron Monger," no, sorry, welcome to Sky Art's "Landscape Artist of the Year."

- [Joan] Today, eight new artists have traveled from all over Britain and Ireland to put their artistic skills to the test.

- [Frank] Whether they're rolling ink, scraping paint, or stretching wool, it's the judges they need to impress.

Art historian Kate Bryan, independent curator Kathleen Soriano, and award-winning artist Tai Shan Schierenberg.

- I think as a painter, there's plenty here for them to get their teeth into.

- There is, really?

- [Joan] All for the chance of winning a 10,000 pound commission to paint a view made famous by Turner, "Pet with House," and the painting will become part of the National Trust's permanent collection.

- It's like it's got a witch's cauldron, he's just there stirring it and stirring.

- [Frank] But they're not the only artist hoping to catch the judge's eye.

50 more have also descending on Stowe to try their luck as wildcards.

The trees are fabulous like that.

- Thank you.

Do you wanna buy it?

- [Joan] So with just four hours to make their mark.

- Try not to smack my poncho.

Who will claim today's place in the semi-final?

- I feel the monks could have used this in the medieval or monasteries.

What a gorgeous gadget.

(uplifting music) Competing in today's heat are seven professional artists, Nicki Heenan, John Rogers, Niall McCarthy, Tom Yendell, Moy Mackay, John Maxwell Steele, and Peter York.

- The preparation I've done has varied from dreadful to, okay, I'm happy with it.

I do make pieces of work that are absolutely terrible, so I'm worried about doing one of those.

- [Frank] Joining them is just one amateur artist, Richard Allen.

- The only practice I've been doing is the occasional views out of my kitchen window, so anything that's not framed by French windows, I'm a little bit nervous about tackling.

(tranquil music) - Before the challenge begins, the judges get a chance to see the submission landscapes up close and personal for the first time.

The three esteemed judges, the wall, it's the perfect combination, so let us begin.

- I like this one.

Great, big, moody, broody sky.

I'm in that landscape now.

- Mm, I think that it looks deceptively easy to paint a picture like this because it's abstract, because the paint's roughly put on, but to work out how to get that kind of flat, dark, kind of lead gray into the sky and have it evoke rain clouds, I do genuinely feel that they know what they're doing.

- It's English landscape and a filthy day, and it really comes across fantastically.

- I think it's such a clever way of introducing their landscape painting to us.

It's like they're giving us a photograph of what they've created, but instead of using a camera, they've painted it.

- So it's funny, we're actually looking at the landscape within the painting, and my eyes sort of resting on the surface of the painting and not going in.

- What I understand is these are photograph postcards.

So we took photographs, made them postcards, they're leaning up, and then it was painted like us still life.

- Now you say it, I'm even more impressed because if I were in the studio, I would expect that picture to be about that high.

- Exactly, me too.

- This is a lovely felty, wooly thing, not a painty thing.

- I probably would normally be very wary of something like this as just being completely crafty, and not really occupying a strong enough position in a sort of fine art arena, which obviously shows the level of snobbery.

But I think it's really successful.

- I like the mark making, I like the inventiveness.

I mean the mixture of threads in the sky to get that sunset, and the detailing in the flowers, and the bubbling in the stream is extraordinary.

- I love the color palette of this, these really diesel-like blues playing around, and then flashes of this almost like peachy color.

- The longer we stand here, the more I get the sense of this mass of water, and the grayness of it, and the shiny bits of it on its surface, and it really is moving.

I think they've got that very well, the atmosphere.

(birds chirping) - [Joan] The gardens of Stowe in Buckinghamshire were designed in the 18th century by architect William Kent, and further developed by the famous landscape gardener Capability Brown.

Created as a series of pleasing vistas, the gardens are full of architectural follies, two of which our artists are facing today, the gothic temple and the palladian bridge.

- [Frank] While most of the competitors prepare to recreate the view in just one painting, one artist is hedging his bet.

- I've been working on all three canvas boards at the same time, more or less.

One of them will have more of a balance and it'll please my eye, and I know that's the one that I should put forward, so it's just a matter of numbers, really.

I should get one out of the three.

- [Joan] John Maxwell Steele is a professional artist from Solihull in the West Midlands.

His submission painting shows a view of the fields from his studio window.

He uses industrial paint, applying it with an object he bought from a hardware store.

- That's in the bottom of the door to keep the draft out.

There was more used painting than keeping the draft out, so just use these to move the paint around.

They are beginning to come to the end of their life now.

They need replacing, but I thought I'd stick with them one more time.

(John laughing) (uplifting music) - Color is a bit dull today, but I'll just use my imagination, I think.

- Can't wait, I just wanna get going, warm up a bit.

- Artists, I hope you are feeling inspired because your challenge is about to begin.

- May your muse be with you and your time starts now.

(uplifting music) For some artists, picking which scene to paint can be easier said than done.

- Every view, when you frame it, is quite tempting.

The main problem is choosing something that has sufficient interest to sustain me.

- [Frank] Richard Allen studied a degree in fine art before becoming a full-time illustrator, but he's recently picked up a paintbrush again as a hobby.

His submission is of Compton Abbas in Dorset, not far from his hometown of Bournemouth.

Richard, I'd stop now.

I like it.

(Richard chuckles) Are you a trees and grass man or do you like a bit of human structure?

- I've composed it so the bridge feature isn't in it, but that's not like sort of drawing mittens on people when you can't draw fingers.

- No, that's a good tip for the people at home.

So there will be no manmade structures in this at all?

- [Richard] There won't, no.

- There's no obligation to go for architecture.

I love the idea that these beautiful things have been placed here by people like Capability Brown, and you thought, "Oh, I don't fancy that much."

(Frank and Richard laughing) - [Joan] But one artist really does fancy the look of these historic surroundings.

- My painting's pretty much about the Cedar of Lebanon 'cause that was planted in 1745, when Capability Brown was here.

We're probably standing in a place where he stood thinking, "I'm gonna plant a tree there."

(laughs) - [Joan] Professional artist, Nicki Heenan, grew up in New Zealand, but now lives in Malmesbury, Wiltshire.

Her submission painting is made with oil paints, wax and pigment, and shows the sea and pier at Aberystwyth in Wales.

- I'm mainly an outdoor painter.

I don't like painting from photographs.

I like that feeling of being cold, or I like the feeling of being hot because it puts something extra into your work.

You need to feel it and take it down to a deeper level.

(uplifting music) - [Tom] A famous mouth painter once said that art is in your heart and your head, and it doesn't really matter what part of your anatomy you paint with.

It's the time that is difficult for me, trying to do something quickly, with silk painting, especially.

- [Frank] Tom Yendell is a professional artist living in Hampshire.

Tom was born with no arms due to the drug thalidomide, and paints using his mouth and his feet.

His submission was painted in acrylics by foot, and shows an imagined bluebell woodland scene.

Tom, you got a pretty detailed drawing on the go there.

Tell me how does the drawing fit into your process?

- I do the drawing first, and then I put this behind the silk, so the silk is the main thing.

- Oh, it's going underneath that?

- So the transparency, you can see the composition.

- Yeah, this is just about making the mark.

So the problem when you're painted with your mouth is when you paint, you hold the brush or the pen in one place, and you look with your eyes, so you only see one.

- Right, so your vision's gonna be limited when you switch to the working with your mouth.

- When you paint with your mouth, you look up here, and then you paint down here, and it's a different perspective.

- So you need to get the- - So by doing this, I can hopefully get the image right before I put it onto the silk.

That's the idea.

(tranquil music) - [Joan] Our eight competitors aren't the only ones painting here at Stowe today.

We've invited up to 50 other artists of all ages, techniques, and abilities to take part as wild cards and unleash their creativity.

- I have to have music in my head before I can scribble.

This is definitely swing music.

♪ Dum, dum, da-da-da-da-da ♪ ♪ Dum, dum, da-da-da-da-da, dum, dum ♪ - [Joan] If one of them impresses the judges, they could find themselves competing in the semi-final.

But why, given all the vistas around here, have you chosen to do the mowing of the lawn?

- [Artist] Well, it's patterns, you see, isn't it?

- [Joan] I love the idea of the inks getting blotted onto it.

I just think that's really satisfying.

- [Artist] Apparently, Andy Warhol used to do it as well.

- I like to experiment.

I've got watercolor, bathing salt, silk threads, and blow torch.

It should leave a nice, sort of like brambles come, yeah.

(uplifting music) - [Joan] Is that a sponge?

- [Artist] It's an old sock.

- It's a sock.

- Oh, of course.

- I'll let the paint do its own work, see what happens.

It's a bit of a voyager discovery, really.

- Do you share your umbrella when it rains?

- No, no.

(tranquil music) - [Frank] Competing for a definite place in the semi-final, our eight artists have been working on their landscapes for almost an hour.

- I'm feeling that I need to sort of make a move, actually, and sort of start the more technical parts of the painting, how I want the building to look, and the reflections, and things like that.

- With silk, you can get some real disasters, so I'm just gonna have to take my time with the line and think about the color later.

(tranquil music) - [Frank] Already, they've got a really good feel to them.

There'll be people all for Britain ripping the bottoms off their doors when they say this.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music) - [Joan] An hour into the competition here at Stowe, our eight artists are etching, sketching, and painting their landscapes, but there's also a technique we've never seen before, felting.

- [Frank] So is this your original method?

- Well, felt making isn't, it's the oldest form of fabric making known to man, so that's not mine.

- Okay, you're not claiming that.

- But I try to develop it in a more painterly way.

I wanted to make people think that it's a painting.

- [Frank] Moy Mackay is a professional textile artist from the Scottish borders.

Her submission is a view of her hometown of Peebles, and it's made by blending and matting together merino wool fibers, a technique she calls felted painting.

Can I actually have a go?

- Yes, so you hold that hand, and you're going opposite directions, and you're brushing them away.

- Like that?

- Yep, these are actually dog brushes.

- [Frank] Are they really?

- [Moy] Yeah.

- So what have I just done with this?

What have I achieved?

Nothing, I've moved some wool about on a couple of dog brushes.

- Yeah, but then you take it off and- - [Frank] Oh, okay.

- [Moy] You have to do it a few times.

- [Frank] Yeah, just imagine if it was there, like that.

As you say, it needs a bit more dog brush.

We all do.

(Moy laughing) - Yeah, I do.

- Just in time.

(cheerful music) - The bridge is the star of the show.

It's wonderfully twee, or could possibly be, so I'll try and make it a little bit more than it is, add a little bit of graphicness to it.

- [Joan] John Rogers is a professional artist from Sidcup in Kent, who spent his working life in the design and advertising industry.

His submission painting is a composite image of views of Greenwich Reach on the river Thames.

- Here, you're drawing onto tracing paper, so what's the technique?

You're gonna- - I draw in pencil on tracing paper accurately.

Once I'm happy with that and I've composed the image, I'll transfer it onto the board.

- You chose this wood surface because of the equivalence of- - Yeah, this beautiful honeyed stone that's everywhere.

So I'm planning to use the tone of this.

I'll put the shadows in, I'll put highlights on, but the body color, which I would normally paint.

- Well, that's interesting 'cause it gives it a bit of breathing space.

- Yeah, and it gives it texture, gives it movement.

(tranquil music) - [Frank] Tai, I'm a bit worried about this one.

It's almost like you've asked them to paint something slightly in between the landscapes, if you know what I mean?

- No, go on.

- Well, you've got that fantastic bridge, but it's a bit off for them, over here somewhere.

The church on the top is obscured mainly by, I mean, what you've asked them to paint is a big, green hill.

- I can see your point, but I think as a painter, there's plenty here for them to get their teeth into.

- There is, really?

I think you do one swish with a four-inch brush across the canvas, and you've basically got this.

- What?

(tranquil music) - [Frank] One artist, forgoing paintbrush and canvas entirely, has engraved his drawing of the landscape onto plastic as the first stage in his printmaking process.

- Right, I've just applied the ink with a piece of card, which you force-dig down into actual all the marks that you've made on there, and then wipe it off with a bit of old telephone book.

This is just to see what the first marks I put on there look like.

- [Joan] Peter York is a professional artist from Sheffield, specializing in printmaking.

His submission of the Derbyshire countryside was made by dry-point etching, a printmaking technique that he's also using today.

- We put that over the top there.

- [Joan] Okay.

- [Peter] As you can see, it's quite messy.

- [Joan] It's fun though, isn't it?

What it gorgeous gadget.

I feel the monks could have used this in the medieval monasteries, printing out the Bible.

- [Peter] Illuminating manuscripts and things like that.

- [Joan] Lovely, it's emerging, oh.

- So you can start seeing the different marks I'm working with.

There'll be all sorts of things happening with it all.

- You're going to put on color here?

- Oh yeah, they'll be smudged in, they'll be wiped in.

So you have the same image, but it could be that it's stormy, could be blue skies, it could be sunset.

- You're in control of the weather.

- I can make it up.

- Terrific.

(laughs) - Yes.

(tranquil music) - I usually work, it's like cleaning a window, I turn to top left corner, work across and then down, and just going back and forth, sort of like typewriting, I suppose, or cleaning a window, yeah.

- [Frank] Irish artist Niall McCarthy has been painting professionally for five years since giving up his previous career as an archeologist.

His submission is a hyper-realist painting of waves breaking on Garryvoe Beach in Cork, but today, he's hoping to impress with a surprising new technique.

- [Joan] This is completely different.

- Yeah, very different.

I want to get across the sort of a rush effect.

- Okay.

It's speed, you want movement, movement in the landscape.

- Exactly.

- I can see that.

Why is this sense of speed and energy so important to you in the landscape here, which is actually very solid and stayed, and there isn't much movement at all?

- I think it's just, for me, summer is a very transient season, perhaps the most, and just like, oh, this is going to be soon turning to rot, really, in a couple of weeks.

- So soon, so soon.

(cheerful music) - [Joan] Meanwhile, the wild card artists are expressing their creative talents.

- I love this.

The trees are, in particular, are fabulous, I think.

- Thank you, do you wanna buy it?

- Um, maybe we could talk later.

(cheerful music) - I want to put the odd duck on the water.

- [Frank] Why don't you get a swan?

- I never thought of that.

- There's swans around.

- If you're gonna buy it, you might as well have what you want, and if you want a swan, you'll have a swan.

- Okay.

- [Joan] Oh, you're also looking over to the right-hand side.

- Yes, it's more of a theme of fantasy going on over there.

- That's right, people are going for that, and they're ignoring that one.

- I can say I love it, but I'm loathe to say that.

Every time I say I like it, the price goes up a bit.

There's a lot of grass up to this huge country palm, which is very symmetrical.

- It could automatically just look really cheesy, but I think there are people who have found really interesting compositions, as the guy just over here who's doing this really modernist painting.

I like what he is doing.

- [Tai] It's a substantial piece of painting.

- Have you seen the woman who's got the big green umbrella, who's making the black and white ink work?

- Mm, she's used those lawn mower patterns.

Very beautiful to lead you through the painting.

I'm just gotta mention this, there's a lot of goose excrement, and flies, so there are sort of a few things they're having to fight with and they're doing pretty well.

(tranquil music) - [Joan] There are key stages in all our artists' work, and Tom's reached the crucial point of transferring his pencil sketch onto his silk canvas.

How lovely it is.

Now, this is the most meticulous drawing.

- Yeah, and now I'm just about to use my mouth to trace and use the thing called gutta to make the line.

- It's a sort of rubber, isn't?

- Yeah, it's like wax.

If you just drop ink on the silk, it would bleed to the edge of the silk, so you have to form like little reservoirs for the paints to go into.

(tranquil music) - [Frank] Also working in fabric, Moy is giving her woolen landscape a bit of a soak.

- Covered it with a mesh, I put soap and hot water on it, and what that does is it mats the fibers together.

At this point, it takes on a bit of a life of its own, and hopefully, when you peel it back, it's a nice surprise.

- [Joan] It's nearly halfway through the competition, and to mark the occasion, the heavens have well and truly opened.

- Oh dear.

- [Frank] But it's not necessarily bad news.

- The rain has kind of simplified some elements on the painting, so it can help with the process.

- The rain puts a veil on everything in the landscapes, plus you can't see, that's always a plus 'cause it's your mind that ruins your work.

- The rain's good.

There's lots of flies as well.

It should all add to the organic feel to it.

(laughs) (tranquil music) (tranquil music) - [Joan] Battling the great British weather here at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, our eight contestants are halfway through their landscape challenge.

In just under two hours, the judges will have to choose a winner.

So how do they think the competition's going so far?

The rains have come.

How does it affect the day?

- When it's rainy, you hope the sky's gonna be a bit lively, but even the sky's a bit of a flat gray, so it's difficult.

I think they've done quite well with what they've got because they've had to use elements from the landscape, rather than use light and shade.

- It'll work very well for John because he actually painted, and then he washed it all away.

I've seen his three pictures come to life, almost look finished, and then somehow two seconds later, it's back where it was before.

It's about getting the sense of the landscape through mixing and melting all those colors together.

- It seems like a, quite a perverse technique.

It's like he's got a witch's cauldron that is just there stirring it and stirring it, waiting for the magic to happen.

- [Joan] What about Richard?

- I just love the way he puts paint on.

And in the subtlety of tone, he's creating distance.

What we loved about his submission, of course, was the conceptual idea of taking a landscape and reproducing it as a still life, and he hasn't played with those ideas, and I wonder, is it going to be special enough?

- [Joan] What about Nicki?

- At the moment, I don't like it as much as I liked her submission.

It feels like what she's doing at the moment is a bit clunky in comparison.

I don't know that that color palette and that composition are doing anything particularly interesting, but it might just be that it's so unfinished.

- Okay, Moy, how's the wool going?

- It's not an easy thing to do outdoors.

I mean, I didn't really comprehend how she made it, but there's all this wet and dry process that she's got to go through.

- Well, the washing is the way of meshing it together, rather like blending.

You put a sweater and then the washing machine, and it gets all fibrous, that's what she's trying to do with the washing.

- I mean, there's obviously a huge degree of skill and experience in knowing if she puts that there, when she washes and rolls it, it's going to create that effect, which really can't be underestimated, that level of skill.

- I've rinsed the thaw out of the filthy painting, so now I'm going to just put it in the spinner to hopefully get it as dry as we possibly can.

(spinner cluttering) (rain puttering) And dry, fresh.

- [Frank] But unfortunately for Tom, keeping his silk painting dry isn't quite as easy.

Well, it's run a bit.

- Run a bit.

- But you know what?

It's not an unpleasant effect.

Do you think?

You hate it.

- [Tom] I have to be polite, don't I?

With silk, no matter how much ink you put on it, it's not gonna change the effect, really.

- Maybe this is a happy accident.

(melancholy music) The lush, unbridled gardens, the woodlands and rivers running through Stowe look as if they've always been here, but appearances can be deceptive.

- Stowe is a completely fake garden.

It's a naturalistic picturesque-looking informal landscape, but it's completely contrived and created by lots and lots of people.

- [Frank] The gardens we see now at Stowe were created by Lord Cobham who inherited the estate in 1697.

At the time, the fashion was for the formal French parterres, influenced by the grand gardens of Versailles.

However, Cobham's vision was to create a new kind of natural-looking garden.

- He wasn't afraid of just losing the landscape that was there and starting again on his idea of creating what was the beginnings of the English landscape movement.

- [Frank] Enabling this new informal landscape was the latest technological invention, the ha-ha.

- It's a very clever feature that sinks a retaining wall into the landscape so that your sheep or your cows cannot enter your garden, but looking out, you've got an uninterrupted view that almost joins your garden into the wider countryside.

- [Frank] In 1741, Lord Cobham entrusted the grounds into the hands of his head gardener, Capability Brown.

He implemented and developed Cobham's vision, creating a seemingly natural, but in fact, entirely manmade pastoral paradise of elegant, sweeping valleys, expansive lakes, and gentle woodland.

This style of landscaping not only made Capability Brown's reputation, but also set the template for the archetypal English style of garden.

- I think Stowe is the most influential landscape garden, possibly in Europe.

So it's a product that the English invented in this model of a garden that's completely different to anything that went before it.

- [Frank] Nearly 300 years after their creation, the gardens of Stowe endure as if made by nature herself.

- [Joan] Suffering for their art in the day's downpour are our intrepid wild card artists.

As the judges don their most stylish outerwear, they have to decide which of today's 50 wild cards is the winner, and it's not easy.

- I really like the guy over there with the kind of big, dark, modernist painting.

- The deep purples.

- [Kate] Yeah.

- [Tai] Yeah, with the light coming through.

Yeah, that was one's rather pretty.

- Did you see the lady with the ink?

- The ink is fantastic.

I really like that one.

- I like the width of the composition.

- It's ambitious.

- Yeah, yeah, and the idea of closeness, which she's got the trees on the right, and the temple on the left, up of the building on the left.

No, she's got great- - [Kathleen] And she's been ambitious, to work with ink on that scale is really, really good.

- A lot of people working big.

- Yeah.

Hello.

- [Kim] Hello.

- Myself and my wonderful fellow judges have all decided that we'd really like you to be the wild card today.

- Wow.

(people cheering) Thank you.

(people clapping) - [Joan] Portsmouth-based artist, Kim Whitby, will now enter a pool of wild card winners from which one will be selected by the judges to take part in the semi-final.

- [Frank] It's not just materials and equipment our artists bring with them, friends and family are often part of the kit, too.

Peter, so you're Richard's dad.

- That's right, yeah.

- [Frank] And when did you realize you'd got an artistic talent in the family?

- I think when he was around two, he started to draw then, and quite well, and he's had a pencil in his hand ever since.

- I don't think I'd give a two-year-old a pointy old pencil, but you took the risk and it's paid off.

- That's right, yes.

- What he's done is he's painted quite an accurate representation of the landscape, which we don't get very often.

It's quite a novelty approach on this show.

(tranquil music) - I'm interested to know whether you remain an optimist, and whether that one inch of blue sky is going to remain.

- [Richard] It's there to stay.

- Okay.

How do you know when to stop?

- Well, fundamentally, when it's all blocked in.

- [Kate] Is there one part, for example, that you're just absolutely not gonna touch in the last half an hour because you don't wanna disrupt what you've already done?

- There's nothing that I'm particularly precious about.

- Right, so you'll let it keep evolving right up until the last minute?

- Yeah.

- [Kate] Okay.

- [Joan] Today our artists are using a range of tools to create different effects and textures, but Nicki likes to incorporate mother nature.

- I often have my watercolors that I just chuck them, or I'm gonna chuck it.

Right, now this has got grass, it's got stuff.

It makes it more interesting.

It stops the human hand being the controlling thing.

Nature's the force, isn't it, not humans.

(duck quaking) (uplifting music) - [Frank] The artists have just 30 minutes left to complete their landscapes.

- At the moment I'm needle felting, which is how I add finer detail and a bit of shading.

I think it's going okay.

(uplifting music) - The fabric's so damp, but it's not looking disastrous.

Put a bit of darker color on it might bring it up a bit.

(uplifting music) - It's always been a balance between the tree and the building, but I want the tree to win.

- Okay.

- I'm just getting to the point where I'm hoping I can start playing with it by putting some color and more different effects onto it.

- I knew this was a challenge.

A bit longer, another couple of days would've probably helped, but there you go.

(laughs) - As far as time goes, it may well be that I'm sort of tinkering.

I think that I'm on schedule.

I don't like to tempt fate.

(uplifting music) (uplifting music) - [Joan] Here in the stately gardens of Stowe in Buckinghamshire, our eight artists are in the very last moments of their landscape challenge.

- It's very subtle.

- It is very subtle.

- [Moy] Yeah.

- [Frank] It looks like light hit in the pillars, doesn't it, the off-white cotton.

- [Moy] Yeah.

- Try not to snag my poncho.

I don't wanna be incorporated into your art.

(uplifting music) - I'm reasonably happy.

Working wet will allow me to maybe sort of tie things together with final brush strokes that bring the whole into one.

(uplifting music) - Hard around the eyes now, yeah, and sore in the feet.

Yeah, so good it's nearly over.

(uplifting music) - [Joan] Artists, you have just five minutes left.

(dramatic music) - I'm really just putting the final touches on as much as I possibly can, not worry about little tiny bits of it, but how's the whole thing working as a composition.

(dramatic music) - So I suppose a big question is which is the one.

- I'm still undecided.

One of the two end ones.

- Okay.

- Possibly.

- Artists, your four hours are up.

- Please stop what you are doing and step away from your work.

(people applauding) (tranquil music) It's the judges who make the final decision on the day's winner, but before their deliberations, some art-loving onlookers share their thoughts.

- That's really nice, isn't it?

- Yes.

- [Woman] It's nice and light.

A lot of things today have been rather dark with the gloom and the weather.

- I like what he's done with the sky.

- Yeah, beautiful colors, yeah.

(uplifting music) - I actually walk my dogs every day here, and that's a really unusual perspective 'cause it actually looks like something's moving as if a train's sort of going past.

- [Joan] To help the judges select today's winning artist, they first reduce the eight artworks to a shortlist of three.

- It's a pity that Tom lost out against the reign a bit.

- I think he was a bit concerned that it started to fall into sort of boutique style, but actually I thought it was much closer to Italian marbling or something.

I loved his formality, the way in which he approached the bridge front and center.

That was the hero.

I still think it's got a great mood to it.

- What will I take away today?

Not to paint in the wet and not to do silk outside, I think.

(uplifting music) - I really like this.

It's one of those brilliant moments in this competition where someone has really taken the time to plan everything through, and then allows it to all come together in the final hour, and it's exactly what she's done.

- The colors through it are beautiful, and as it goes towards the bridge, you get those bits of pink that are reflections of the bridge.

I think overall, it's nice and balanced.

- Yeah, no, no, I like it.

- I wouldn't say that the piece is the best painting I've ever painted.

However, the piece is raw and expresses the emotions and the weather conditions of the day, and that I find quite exciting.

(uplifting music) - I think it's a painting of great dynamism.

At no point did he respond to the landscape.

I think the paintings, the three of them, took over, and he was responding to what was happening on the painting, which is no bad thing.

I think it gives the actual structure and the composition and the surface great vitality, but I thought we wanted our artists to respond a bit to the landscape.

- I mean, what it does as an abstracted image is that the more time you spend with it, the more you start to impose a view on it, so you can suddenly see a tree over there, or a figure in the left-hand side, but who knows.

- Miserable, filthy weather, it sort of helped.

It's like a dappling effect on the sky and the foreground, which I was quite pleased with.

(uplifting music) - I just love the thickness of the paint the way it's put on.

It's thick enough so you can see the directions of the marks, how they lead you across the structure of the tree, and each tree has its own personality.

- [Kate] I love that tree at the back.

- [Tai] It's fantastic.

- I find it a little bit muddy, a little bit uninteresting.

- [Kate] No.

- But he did actually get a good sense of the place today.

- I don't think that there's anything that I could have necessarily done differently.

My main concern was just about framing the composition right.

Maybe the sweep that I took in was a bit sort of general.

- Well, who would've thought the most painterly thing in the whole run today, isn't paint at all.

It's actually this fantastic felt.

- I love the light emanating from behind the hill, and the distance, I mean, I can't believe you can get that much distance with wool.

- I just think it's great to have such a distinct medium, and then also to have a really distinct aesthetic.

She creates this fantasy land.

It's like Tim Burton, slightly gothic, it's slightly naive.

It's a wonky, dark rendering of this landscape.

- There's always things you think, oh, I wish I'd done this or done that, but actually, doing it outdoors in sort of all sorts of weather, so I think considering all that, I'm quite happy with the outcome.

- If I look at those three, I think it's a strong- - That looks so good.

I think that they're all doing something really different.

- Those two, I think are fantastic.

- That is amazing.

- And that second one looks so much better from a distance.

- [Frank] After much deliberation, the judges pick their shortlisted three, and the first of those artists is Nicki Heenan.

(people applauding) - And the second is Richard Allen.

(people clapping) - And the third artist to be shortlisted is Moy Mackay.

(people applauding) - Well done, everybody else.

The standard's been enormously high.

- Not disappointed by the result.

As long as I walked away, and the work I produced I thought was of a good standard that I like, that was fine by me.

- [Joan] Before they decide who will win a place in the semi-final, the judges take the opportunity to look at the work the shortlisted three have produced today alongside their submissions.

- Let's start with Moy.

- I much prefer what she did today to her submission.

I think it's got more sophistication, it's got this kind of gothic, noir element to it, which works better.

- The abstract qualities of her natural form work really well, and then we come to the buildings and it doesn't quite work, I don't think.

- I completely agree with you, but there are moments like that tree on the left-hand side, which is just tremendous.

- She's a fantastic artist.

There are reflective passages under the bridge.

I don't even know how she's done it with the wool.

- It's quite nice to have the opportunity to speak out for wool and textiles as an art form.

- [Tai] To Richard.

- We really got to explore the way that he painted today, the way he comes at things in a almost counterintuitive way.

So he's building this tree, but he's using zigzag lines.

- It really does have a completeness about it, and that muddiness that we see in the foreground, I think is as much about giving us that sense of distance so that the foreground is almost a hazy blur, and the eye's focus is very sharply taken to the back.

So I think it's the way in which he's using the paint to describe perspective.

- There's plenty of things that can go wrong in a process like that, so just grateful to make it through to the final three.

- Nicki's work, the only one with a great sea scape in the foreground.

- I was slightly surprised by such different treatment of water today.

I think I expected that to be her style of treating water and to see the lake described in a similar way.

- The first one was made in the studio, and I wonder whether it was made from the photograph.

Whereas what I think the painting lives off to today is her struggle to find the form and the textures in the landscape, and it makes it richer for that.

- I find this really difficult because we've got three really good artists.

- Really good.

- I'm absolutely thrilled that I've got this far and didn't think I would, but it's a lovely feeling.

- Moy, Richard, Nicki, congratulations on reaching the short list, but you know, when it's down to three, it's a really tough decision, and there can only be one winner.

- Yes, and that winner is Richard Allen.

(people clapping) - Well done.

Well done, well done.

- [Frank] I love your stuff so much.

- It's more than I could have hoped for, it's great.

I've texted my wife, I've texted my mother, my father needed no encouragement and stormed the stage.

- Go on, that's perfect.

- [Woman] Thank you very much.

- It was a really difficult decision today, but ultimately, we picked Richard because we just fell in love with the way that he was able to manipulate paint and for it to be so expressive, but also so representational, it was unusual.

It's actually quite subtle and we're absolutely fascinated to see what he can do with that moving forward.

- It feels amazing.

I feel elated, but truly, truly tired.

(people clapping) Next is the semi-final.

(tranquil music) (tranquil music) (ethereal music)