(gentle music) - Hello, and welcome to Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, the largest monastic ruins in the country, where, today, eight artists are praying that they will be blessed with divine inspiration.

- But only one of the chosen few can earn a place in the promised land of the semifinal.

- Hallelujah.

It's a brand new series of "Sky Art's Landscape Artist of the Year".

From Kent's sandy beaches, to the lochs and castles of the Scottish Highlands... - [Joan] We've traveled across Britain, searching for stunning scenery for the artist's to paint.

- There's plenty to catch onto, and then I'll get my big brush and close my eyes and stab away at it and to see what happens.

- There's nothing like an ironing board in the middle of a field.

The surrealists would love it, wouldn't they?

- [Stephen] From hundreds of paintings submitted, only eight competitors have been picked for each heat.

And today we have five professional artists, Frances Lemmon, Carl Knibb, Fujiko Rose, Jonathan Hargreaves, and Haidee-Jo Summers.

- Art's really been everything to me.

I can't do anything else other than draw and paint.

Sad, but true.

- [Joan] And joining them are three amateur artists, Will Huggett, Sam Weston, and Kate Rowe.

- I had no idea I'd be chosen.

But it's like a pinnacle of my life.

- [Stephen] As usual, the artists will work under the watchful eyes of our judges: independent curator Kathleen Soriano, art historian, Kate Bryan, and award-winning artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg.

- You don't make grass green then?

Well, this is green.

- It looks yellow to me but- - It's yellow green.

Okay, well it looks a fabulous, luminous start.

- [Joan] They're all competing for a £10,000 commission from the Imperial War Museum to mark the centenary of the First World War armistice by creating an artwork inspired by the landscape of a forgotten battlefield.

- [Stephen] As well as the chosen eight, we've invited 50 more artists to compete as wildcards.

Just one of them will go through to the next stage of the competition.

- You're so contrary, there's this amazing abbey behind you and you're facing that way.

- I know.

- [Kate] What are you doing?

- [Joan] So which of today's artists will win a place in the semi-final?

- I could do some running around naked and distract them.

- Yes!

Run back and forward in front of the- - I'm trying to get everyone to run around naked.

You're the first one that's even nibbled.

- Really?

Wow.

- If you pardon the expression.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Joan] Before the challenge begins and the spectators arrive, the artists settle into their pods.

- I've brought some of my favorite colors because they're like family to me.

I think somewhere along the way, there'll be mustard and there'll be pink.

- I've got quite a variety of brushes.

Some of these I think are actually varnishing brushes.

You can get quite calligraphic marks with those, and you get a more gestural mark with a longer brush too.

- All of the artists in the competition are selected on the strength of a landscape submission.

And the judges now have the chance to examine the originals.

Welcome to the wall.

And a very colorful- - Yeah.

- Object to start with.

- [Kate] It's great because they've abstracted the landscape.

And then obviously they've given us this very, very vivid, unnatural color.

So I hope that we get something as bold and bright today.

(gentle music) - [Stephen] Very idyllic, isn't it?

And- - Yeah.

The allotment is absolutely.

But it also harks back to Nordic paintings of church spires.

It crosses sort of centuries, but feels very contemporary the way the paint's put on.

- [Kate] They've used the white space really intelligently.

You can see the trees are very full there, but actually they've left a lot of white space, which is almost like the light hitting the trees.

- Suddenly I realized that it was made up of all these crazy marks.

The eye mixes them and you do get that sense of bark.

- [Kathleen] Almost like a Maori tattoo or something when you see it going up there.

It's really, really accomplished.

(gentle music) - [Tai] It's always risky, isn't it, picking a subject that is so well known?

It lives off the way he puts the paint on and the colors in the sky are just spectacular.

- He sort of funnels us with that line, the edge of the building heading directly to the spire.

Compositionally, it's incredibly well thought through.

- Now I know you only see these submissions digitally.

Were you expecting this one to be this small?

- [Kate] No, I mean, it must be one of the smallest we've ever had.

- [Kathleen] It's so gorgeous though.

The way the waves are sort of frothing up in the foreground and they've got that lovely sense of distance with the tankers.

I think it's beautiful.

- Well, I'm keen to know if the painter, like the painting, is going to be tiny and moody.

(all laughing) (gentle music) - It is a very strange monochromatic piece of painting, but it has got a mood that is sort of quite evocative.

And I think that there's a lot of stencil cutting and stuff.

I mean, there's a lot of detail in the foliage that needs to be sort of cut out or produced.

So it's gonna be intriguing how they're gonna cope today.

- [Kathleen] I love the way they've got the lines of the lawn that are echoed also in the way in which they've constructed the trees.

- You're right.

Trying to invent a way of getting tree-ness across with stitching.

And they've done it very well.

The morning commute on a really sort of dull bend in the road, but it lives off the light.

I mean, the light is fabulous.

- [Kate] You so really feel that you're walking behind this person down this street.

And that the sun is in your eyes.

And that's just a fantastic thing to be able to evoke.

- Well, let's hope they get the light today that they're looking for.

(gentle music) - Not very confident at all.

But then most artists never are.

But the sun's just coming out as well so that should make it a bit easier.

- The time limit is definitely gonna be a push.

I'm not gonna be doing many breaks, I'm gonna be chained to the table for as long as possible.

- I'm just excited now.

It kind of seems to be ramping up and I'm kind of just... Just almost wanna get it going.

- Artists, this is the moment you've been waiting for.

- You have four hours to paint your landscapes and your time starts now.

- [Joan] The artists begin by establishing their composition, whether it's with a sketch, a camera or a full blown watercolor study of the Abbey.

The view today is of the dramatic ruins of the 900 year old Fountains Abbey, surrounded by parkland and sitting alongside the River Skell.

Once the largest and richest monastery in the country, today it's a UNESCO World Heritage site, which attracts over 400,000 visitors a year.

- I think it's almost too good a view.

- Yeah.

- We've given them this like absolutely majestic crumbling ruin.

- [Kathleen] They're surrounded by these beautiful trees and this great lawn.

- Yeah.

- And I just want to see some of that context in the works as well, rather than just a sort of purely mathematical study.

- I'm kind of hoping someone does something really moody and filmic and Gothic.

I don't want them necessarily all pretty.

I want someone to kind of taken it at different angle.

- [Kathleen] Yeah, exactly.

(gentle music) - Ruins are one of my favorite things to visit or draw actually, so it was perfect.

- It's a tricky one.

It's daunting.

But that's the challenge of art.

You have to make something of the thing that's in front of you.

- Before becoming a professional artist and teacher, Carl Knibb, from Lichfield in Staffordshire, had a varied career cleaning septic tanks, and even working in a custard factory.

His submission piece, a study in acrylics of the interplay between light and shadow, was completed in under three hours.

So we're 20 minutes in.

You've nearly finished your second painting.

Is there somewhere you need to be?

- [Carl] I don't think too much.

I do a quick sketch first to sort of work out what I want do.

- Yeah.

- It's literally just to get used to colors.

- [Stephen] And you make a decision later about which one to work from?

- Oh no, no, no.

That's rubbish.

- That's just for fun?

- Yeah.

This is the- - [Stephen] This is the hors d'oeuvres, this is the main course.

They knew how to build a building those monks, didn't they?

- They did.

And then Henry VIII knocked them all down.

(gentle music) - I used to go to school in north Yorkshire and I used to come here with my husband on dates and just have the day sketching, having a picnic around here and many of the abbeys in north Yorkshire.

Kind of abbey groupies.

It brings back nice memories.

- [Joan] Haidee-Jo Summers, who now lives in Lincoln, has been drawing from life since she was 10 and two years ago, she achieved her ambition of becoming a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

Her submission of allotments near her home mirrors her fascination with busy, intimate scenes.

- It's lovely, the way you've sort of disobeyed this enormous structure, which is screaming, paint me, paint me and you've gone slightly over to the- - I know, I felt a little bit guilty about that.

It's the light, but also the busy shapes.

I like lots of interesting shapes to try to work out.

- I really think it's fantastic that you've captured this corner over here.

I think it was gorgeous.

(gentle music) - [Stephen] Our eight competitors at Fountains Abbey are joined today by 50 wild card artists, arriving to depict the dramatic abbey ruins from a more oblique angle, overlooking the nave and cloister of the monastery.

- I'm from Yorkshire so I'm going for it for Yorkshire.

- It's just amazing.

It's not very often that you get to spend a whole sort of four hours painting by yourself in the open air.

Well, I don't anyway.

- Your spoiled for choice here, aren't you?

I mean, you could be facing all those ruins, those ruins, these ruins.

It's just extraordinary landscape altogether.

There's a bridge there, you could have gone for that.

- Yes, that was one of the dilemmas.

- [Stephen] The artist who most impresses the judges... - That's great.

- [Stephen] Will then compete with the wild card winners from the rest of the heats for a place in the semifinal.

- I love this, you're just like diametrically opposed.

It's like you're playing tennis with painting or something.

You're just like ready, set, match.

(gentle music) - I see color quite dramatically, I think.

Sometimes I talk to people about color and I say, "Can you see the purple in the trees?

Can you see the red in the grass?"

And they look at me slightly askance.

- [Joan] Frances Lemmon from Guernsey went to art school in London and is now an art teacher.

Her submission of Guernsey's Petit Bot Bay aimed to convey the color and energy of the landscape in early spring.

- Frances, you've got this fantastic abbey here and I've spoken to other artists and they find it a bit overwhelming.

You don't seem to be overwhelmed at all.

(chuckling) Is it overwhelming?

Take, for example, the tower, you've used an orange for that.

So you are looking for clues and then you use the color and you sort of crank it up higher.

- I would call that mustard, rather than orange.

- Oh, okay.

- And I'm thinking, right, I'm going to put that in and then I'm gonna block in the blue and then I'm going to work out what's in between the two.

- You don't make grass green then?

- Well, this is green.

- No, it looks yellow to me, but okay.

- It's yellow green.

- Okay.

I'm kind of intrigued how it evolves.

(gentle music) - [Stephen] One artist is returning to the competition with renewed conviction, after reaching the semifinal in 2017.

- When I look back on the last year or so, what I'm aware of is I just paint a little bit thicker and not overworking it, having the nerve to leave it as it is.

- [Stephen] Last year, Jonathan Hargreaves from Stockport won his heat with an epic depiction of the industrial scene at South Gare in Teeside.

Since then, he's focused on city scapes, with a submission of the view of St. Paul's from Tate Modern.

His expressive style well suited to painting at scale.

- Jonathan, you knew before you arrived today that you were gonna go big, presumably.

- About a meter and a bit yeah.

- Yeah, no fear.

It's actually one of the largest paintings we would have on Landscape Artists.

- The brush strokes wouldn't be evident if it's that small.

- [Kate] So, for you, you've gotta allow them to be big and monumental?

- It's the gestural energy and quality of the brush mark, which I think is interesting and key to painting.

- Yeah.

(gentle music) - [Joan] Competing for a place in the semi-final, our artists are nearly one hour in to their four hour challenge.

- There were a couple of people that were standing in just the right place earlier on.

I put them in and I now need to work out how I'm going to make them stand out.

But those were the people I needed.

(laughing) - I'm always looking for those little bits of magic that something happens in the paint.

Serendipity, chance, does play a part.

There's no two ways about it.

And whenever I get those bits, I get excited.

- I'm at that awkward stage where it can be one thing or another.

And, at the moment, it's neither.

So I'm throwing paint at it to see what happens.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Joan] Here at Fountains Abbey in north Yorkshire, our eight artists are just one hour in to their four hour challenge.

But, for one artist, her painting is just the springboard to a less traditional method of depicting the landscape.

- If someone were to sum up my style of art, I would say it was painting with fabric.

I've ironed it beautifully, it's all in little piles.

(gentle music) - Retired secretary Kate Roe, from Surrey, has been making textile collages for over 40 years.

Her submission is a hand stitched interpretation of an empty tennis court.

So Kate, you have so much gear.

You've got a sewing machine, you've got an iron and you're painting a picture.

- Well, I'm gonna do this to get the shadows and then I'll trace it and then put it onto fabric and replace the tracing paper with fabric.

But I can't do it until I've got the drawing right.

- So do you think four hours is gonna be enough?

- No!

- No?

- No.

- No, okay.

(Kate laughing) (gentle music) - [Kathleen] Fuji, this doesn't look like you're doing landscape.

- I think I quite like a narrow thing, so- - Like a slice.

- [Fuji] Yeah.

Just want to focus on the texture on the- - [Kathleen] Oh, on that lovely wall.

- Yeah and some of the trees behind it.

And then I was also looking at vorticism.

- Well you can see the vorticist thing there with your lovely strong lines, like Wyndam Lewis or something so- - Yeah's my great, great grandfather.

- He's your... Wyndham Lewis is your great-grandfather?

- Yeah, that's why it started.

- My goodness!

- Kind of like, I started looking into it.

(gentle music) - [Joan] Fujiko Rose's great-great-grandfather Wyndham Lewis founded the Vorticist movement in 1914.

Over a hundred years later, Fuji echoed his abstract style in her submission of a view in Valletta, Malta, using a combination of dipping pens and brushes.

At 20, she's the youngest artist in the competition.

- The way you work, do you find that you normally get it right first time, so you have a quiet confidence or do you struggle with it right the way through to the end of the day?

- I usually dislike my work right up until like the very last like bits.

And then it's kind of like, okay, no, no it's coming together now.

- [Kathleen] It looks beautiful what you've got there.

It's fantastic.

(gentle music) - Well, this is rather lovely.

Those monks knew how to lay on a venue for a painting challenge.

- It is magnificent.

My worry is blue sky, green grass, you know, a gray building.

Mmm.

That's, yes, we see that.

- Right.

- I want more.

- Okay.

- But what has happened, as the sun has moved around, it's getting sort of rather moody and the rooks that were flying around in gay abandon are looking a bit more ominous.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- And a member of the public told me that we're standing on the graves of thousands of monks here and suddenly- - Right.

- The things getting a bit of oomph, atmosphere.

We just need Vincent Price standing in one of the upstairs windows.

- Laughing loudly.

- Biting into someone's neck.

(gentle music) - But there's something peculiarly unmenacing about one artist's approach to the scene.

There's nothing like an ironing board in the middle of a field.

The surrealists would love it, wouldn't they?

Oh, it's so delicate.

- It's all a bit of a rush.

- I don't want to hold you up because you've got a long way to go.

- Okay.

- It may surprise some people that I can come and enjoy somewhere like this and create a piece and then go back home and do another motor car or something like that.

- [Stephen] Ex street artist Sam Weston runs his own graphic art business in Monmouth.

But, in his spare time, he creates pictures using stencils and spray paint.

His submission landscape comprised nine different painstakingly cut out layers.

- Sam, sorry to interrupt you when you are in the middle of something with a very sharp knife's.

There's a- - I'll keep it over here.

- [Tai] Tell me what you're doing.

- This is first stencil of, hopefully, five.

- Blimey.

Now, it looks like incredibly intricate work.

- [Sam] It is, yeah.

- [Tai] How long did your submission take?

- About three months.

- Oh, okay.

(laughing) So it is not even on the same time scale.

It's some kind of completely different universe.

- Yeah.

(gentle music) - The building is actually sort of raised here.

- Yes.

- But you've leveled it off in your painting in a way.

- That's a mistake.

I want to bring more perspective and grandeur to it.

- How are you gonna do that now?

- [Carl] I'm gonna have to play with the edges of it to give it a little bit more perspective.

- [Kathleen] Okay.

- And we'll see how that works.

(gentle music) - So Will, you're an art student, right?

So you spent the last few years running naked through town centers and- - That is precisely all I've done.

- Right.

- For the last three years.

That's what an art student does.

- Exactly.

(gentle music) - [Joan] Will Huggett from Hertfordshire has just graduated with a degree in illustration at Falmouth University.

His submission of tankers off the coast near Falmouth followed his preference for darker, moody landscapes.

- I study in Falmouth and it's quite a kind of edgy place, I guess.

Everyone last year, for some reason, got into making spoons.

- Wow.

- Yeah, it was weird.

- And this year?

Forks!

- Yeah, I wish.

- [Stephen] Are you where you wanna be at this particular point?

- [Will] Yeah, I think so.

I might finish with some time spare, which would be nice.

- Great.

Well you can go around trash talk the other- - Yeah.

- The other painters.

- I could do some running around naked and then distract them.

- Yes!

- Run back and forth.

I'm been trying get everyone to run around naked.

You're the first one that's even nibbled.

- Really?

Wow that's- - If you'll pardon the expression.

(gentle music) On the other side of the abbey walls, our 50 wildcard artists are well underway with their paintings.

- I went for a little walk around and I regretted it 'cause everyone's better!

- It's difficult to ignore the abbey.

So I've brought myself so I've got more angle on it.

A beautiful like this, with sun the way it's hitting one side, not the other, it had to be done really.

- It's not my thing usually.

This.

- Ruins?

- Ruins.

I like buildings, like town buildings- - With roofs.

- And things.

Yeah!

- [Kathleen] I think it's interesting, the way they've sort of broken themselves up.

- Yeah.

- Those who are happy to deal with the architecture.

But a really huge body of them who've turned toward the water and gone under the trees.

It's almost like we'll just hide over here in the corner and do our drawing.

- And I don't know that...

I don't know that it really helped anyone to do that.

- Really?

- I bet you it's a picture of this that wins.

- Do you?

- Yeah.

'Cause I'm one third of the judging panel and I want a picture of this to win.

(gentle music) - When I was at school, I found it hard to follow rules.

- Right.

- Even though I was a teacher.

- Oh I see!

When you were at school, you were teaching at school.

Yeah.

- Right.

- And the children knew that I found it hard cause they always said, you know, "Have you not been in trouble this week?

It's only Monday, give me time."

(gentle music) - [Joan] Our eight artists and now reaching the halfway point of the challenge, with two hours left to complete their landscapes.

- I still haven't resolved the perspective.

It's all very one-dimensional.

- I'm struggling to be quick enough.

Just done the abbey and I've sewn a few trees on and all the detail will come at the last minute and it may be too late.

- Unfortunately the sun has disappeared and we've now got a lovely white sky.

So all the shadows that I thought I had, I'm now trying to find where I put them and to put them back in.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Stephen] In north Yorkshire, amid the picturesque ruins of Fountains Abbey the artists are midway through their four hour challenge.

- The light from earlier has gone now.

Whilst, I enjoy painting from memory, it's getting more and more impressionistic.

- Right judges, halfway time.

What do you make of it so far?

- They had this quite spectacular sunshine this morning.

And then now this afternoon is a very flat gray sky.

So interesting to see how they combat that challenge.

- Some of them have remarked on the loss of the sunshine mattering quite a bit.

Okay.

Haidee-Jo.

Now I admire the choice she's made to do the bridges.

- The thing I'm slightly worried about at the moment is it's maybe a bit pretty.

Sunshine on the little stream with the most ruinous of the ruins is the sort of a danger zone.

So actually the weather changing for her might be a benefit.

- What about Will Huggett?

I like his approach, I like the scale of it.

- [Kathleen] Yeah, I think he's very good at dealing with the monumental and then reducing it down.

And I think what Will's given us today is...

It's a detail really.

- It's lovely, but it's not as surprising as his submission.

I don't know how he's going to readjust that.

I'm a bit worried.

- [Joan] And then there's Carl Knibb.

Now he's chosen a very particular view.

- Yeah, he's just a fabulous painter and a very fast painter.

And the first sketch kind of appeared in minutes and had caught the atmosphere of the place almost instantly.

But now the light's gone and I don't know what he's going to work with or work against.

But what he's got, I think is very effective.

- Fuji's is very, very delicate work, isn't it?

Is it appropriate to something as grand as this?

- I think that, because Fuji works in that style, always dedicated to the ink pen, she can deal with whatever scene that's put in front of her.

We saw it in a very serpentine way in her submission.

Today, we've got a much sort of tighter little crop, but if she gets the depth right, you can still feel as if you're walking into it.

(gentle music) - If I make too many changes, I might get away from the strong light that we had this morning.

So I've got to be really careful at this stage not to do too much.

She says still fiddling.

- [Stephen] Sam, are you still doing street art?

- A little bit, not as much as I used to.

Not quite as fit to run away.

(Stephen laughing) - Haven't got the legs.

- No, not anymore.

- So you've set yourself a very simple task today.

- Yeah.

- Of doing 20 hours work in four hours.

Is that right?

- [Sam] That's about the gist of it, yeah.

- Okay, are you panicking?

- No, not outwardly.

- Right.

- Inside is a bit different.

- Okay.

(gentle music) - [Joan] After hours of meticulous preparation, the work of actually committing the design to canvas is fast but final.

- This is probably the most nervous I've been.

See what we get at the end.

At the moment, even I don't know how it's gonna turn out so... - [Kate] How are you feeling?

(Carl sighing) - Down.

- Oh, why?

It's a great painting.

- [Carl] I lost it about an hour ago.

- [Kate] What is it you've lost?

- There was a gorgeous glow to the light catching the tower and the beautiful grays of shadow.

- But I see that you don't have an iPad or a phone, you haven't taken a photograph to work from.

- No.

I just want to let it wash over me, whatever the subject matter is.

But it does lead to confusion sometimes.

- Yeah.

- And for every four that you do, three get thrown in the bin.

(Carl laughing) (gentle music) - [Stephen] The remarkable abbey the artists are striving to capture was established in the 12th century.

When a band of Benedictine monks, searching for a new life, arrived at an untouched valley west of Rippon.

- They wanted to live, they called it, "Far from the concourse of man."

So this was a wild place that they could carve something out of.

- [Stephen] Farming and mining the fertile land, the modest order grew in size and wealth, reinvesting all their resources into the project.

- The complex expanded, expanded, and expanded again.

With a church the scale of a cathedral.

Just extraordinary places that strike us as remarkable, but in the medieval world, where everything is so much smaller, you can hardly begin to imagine just what power they had when people saw them for the first time.

(dramatic music) - [Stephen] In 1539, when Henry VII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries, the 400 year old abbey was stripped bare and the monks banished.

200 years passed by until a new generation of devotees, this time artists, discovered it once more.

- For decades, artists had been traipsing through Italy, on the Grand Tour.

And suddenly people realized actually right on our doorstep are places like Fountains Abbey, with some of the most spectacular ruins in Europe.

(gentle music) - [Stephen] Among the many painters lured to Fountains was one of the most famous names in British art, J.M.W.

Turner.

- Turner's one of the first artists to really understand the potential of watercolor as a medium to capture these kind of extraordinary big landscapes.

It might be fluid, it might be quick, but he knew that you could get the kind of atmosphere and soul of a place with watercolor.

And that's actually, you know, a very pioneering thing that he did as a young man here at Fountains, he showed you it could be as tantalizing as the ruins of Rome.

This was the new Rome and it was in Yorkshire.

- [Stephen] Since it's rediscovery, the landscape of Fountains Abbey has drawn an increasing number of visitors.

(gentle music) And it's never lost its appeal to artists.

- [Joan] Our wild cards have been working on their depictions of the abbey for almost four hours.

- You've got a lot of gear, you've made yourself at home.

- I have, yeah, I've got my candle with me as well 'cause at the end I put candle wax on it.

So it just gives it a certain sheen and also it smells nice.

- So it's scratch the sniff painting.

- It is actually, yeah.

- [Joan] Now it's time for the judges to pick just one wild card who will then have the chance to win a place to compete in the semi-final.

- [Kate] I like the pastel woman.

- [Kathleen] I think she's done a really good job actually.

It's quite sophisticated.

I love the composition of everything.

- And I really like the woman over there in the stripy top.

I think she ended it very well but it's not my favorite one, my favorite one is over there.

- Yeah.

You like it?

- Absolutely.

It's sort of head and shoulders, isn't it?

Beautiful sky.

- He could be in a pod.

He could be in a pod.

- Yes, absolutely.

And I've just gone to speak to him and he's still trying to think of ways to make it better.

And I like that fact that he's a real painter, you know.

(gentle music) - Great.

Done.

Congratulations, you're a wildcard winner today.

- Thank you so much!

(audience applauding) Thank you.

Awesome.

- [Kathleen] We all thought it was fantastic.

Wonderful sense of perspective and light from this morning.

We thought it was great.

- Oh I can't believe it.

Thank you.

It's been a good day.

Beautiful weather.

I'm so pleased.

I can't wait to tell the kids they're gonna... You know, dad's smashed it.

- [Joan] Nick Grove from Northampton will take his place in a pool of winning wildcard artists.

And, when the heats are over, one of them will be chosen to take part in the semifinal.

(gentle music) - Just putting on the second layer now.

This is the do or die moment.

So it either works or it doesn't.

- [Joan] As one artist struggles with time, another is applying a final flourish.

- I just want to add a little touch of gold, little bit of bling.

- Fuji, I've come in at a moment which is very precarious.

You've got sort of gold leaf flying all over the place.

- Ooh!

- Sorry, do you need that?

- No, no, no, but I just, I feel bad.

This is gonna be- - Here, I've got it.

- On the floor.

- No, it just looks incredibly precious.

- [Fuji] It's actually not proper proper gold leaf.

- [Tai] Oh okay, I'll relax.

Now, the light changed today.

Did it affect you very much?

- I tend to make up light a lot.

- Okay.

- Just where I'd like it to be.

- [Tai] A lot of what you're saying is it's quite instinctive.

- Yeah, whatever I think works.

I just just have fun with it.

(laughing) - Okay.

(gentle music) - [Stephen] Our eight artists are entering the final stages of their challenge.

- Really the arches, the top of the arches at the moment I'm working on.

Also the sky, before it was really bright turquoise, and it just looked like a big postcard.

So now it's got a bit dirtier, it's more moody, I like it better.

- That's my three layers now down on there.

It's not come out really, really, as I planned.

There's not my normal level of work in there, things aren't in the right place.

- It was easier before.

But now the light saw a bit flat.

When the light changed and I kind of had to invent bits of it, it perhaps lost something.

- Feeling slightly panicky, but nothing is impossible.

Just the shadows I've got to do.

The time is the challenge really.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - We're at north Yorkshire's Fountains Abbey and our artists are nearing the end of their four hour challenge.

- I've been concentrating so hard on trying to get this painting to click, it's like I've been underwater for four or five hours.

- It does look a bit nondescript.

It's a bit of a mish mash, but I hope I can fix it.

- [Tai] Will, your painting, a bit of it's gone missing suddenly.

Why, how?

- I decided, you know, I didn't really need that bit cause I don't think it- - Oh, okay so- - Really added anything.

- It was part of the composition.

It wasn't like you ran out of time and thought let's quickly tear off half the painting?

- [Will] No.

- The speed I'm having to do, I feel like a machine.

This is ridiculous.

- Artists you have one minute left.

- Flipping 'eck.

- Am I the last person to finish?

- It's not the best piece of work I've done, but it's probably the best piece of work I've done in four hours.

- Artists, your time is up.

- Please put down your equipment and step away from your work.

(audience applauding and cheering) - Even if I'm straight in the car back to Stockport, at least I'll be happy that I've done my best.

- Well done.

- Well done.

- Beautiful piece of work.

- Thank you.

- So glad it's over.

(laughing) Can just calm down now.

- [Stephen] Our eight artists can do no more.

It's time to find out what the judges think.

- Haidee-Jo's picture today is just full of sunshine.

I mean, she really understands how to capture light and shade.

- And I like how it's sort of lighter over here and the light's just playing on the ruins and it's lovely and then down here, you know, there's definitely a totally different feel, slightly more menacing maybe.

(gentle music) - I really thought Will's struggling early on, right?

Because possibly that other strip of paper was still there and it didn't look as tight as it is now.

So very much in control.

So I really misread it and if I... - [Kathleen] So I just love the tonality of the light grays and the dark grays.

And he has actually picked up on the slight pinkness that was in the stone of the building today.

(gentle music) - Kate's delivered something which is quite charming.

I love the way that she's rendered the trees using these little dots of thread to give the impression of the light coming through.

- She didn't have enough time, but I love the fact that drawing was such an important part of her making for her.

And I think she's got a really interesting understanding of colors and palette.

(gentle music) - Carl started out to today with that lovely study and I think he felt that he was so free and expressive in that, that he never quite did that with this.

But I'm really happy with the result.

I think it's a really interesting exercise in light.

- The building's got volume, but it's more about the air in the building than the structure itself and that is extraordinary with that little amount of detail.

(gentle music) Fuji really knows how to construct a drawing, your eye roams and it always finds more to look at.

- I feel a little bit cheated given how gloriously wide this is and that we've ended up with something small, but it's precious.

- Jonathan is comfortable with the paint.

I mean, there's a lusciousness, especially in the vegetation to the right.

And I think as I'm standing here, I can feel the sunlight coming off the lawn still.

- I enjoy watching Jonathan paint, you know, I'm really glad that he made it on this scale.

But there's a flatness and I wonder whether it isn't because he's become so involved in the lusciousness of the paint and the application of the paint, it's all about surface.

What I like about Frances is that she's developed her own language, her own language of color.

- And I like the way that she presents a slightly alternate reality.

It's not just the color, it's the way that everything's a bit lopsided.

And the cloud is weird and these strange liquid like shapes in the foreground and you know, they make you think of some of the surrealists, trying to paint mind scapes.

It feels like it's trying to be quite gritty, almost apocalyptic.

- But I think that's Sam's style, isn't it?

He wants to bring the urban into the sort of this rural nature.

So you've got those two clashes and, at least tonally, he's picked up on the reality of the day.

You know, we were surrounded by green, but perversely, you know, everything in front of the building was green, but he's actually turned the building green.

So I think that's quite clever.

- [Kate] Yeah.

- [Joan] Only one artist can be selected for the semi-final and the judges begin by narrowing their choice down to a short list of three.

- I think my top three really have dealt with the light.

- Yeah.

- And the shade really well.

- This doesn't have light as such, but there is a feeling of light in it, which is odd.

- Exactly.

- It works that way.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Okay so one, two, three.

- Yeah.

- Say goodbye to the others.

(gentle music) - Artists, you've toiled all day long in the shadow of this magnificent abbey.

And for that we're very grateful.

- However, the time has come to reveal the three artists the judges have shortlisted to win today's heat.

The first artist selected is Haidee-Jo Summers.

(audience applauding) - The second artist is Carl Knibb.

(audience applauding) - And the third artist to be shortlisted, Fuji Rose.

(audience applauding) - Our commiserations to all of you who haven't made it, but you've really held us all enthralled all day so congratulations to all of you too.

(audience applauding) - I'm just a bit disappointed, but I think every artist here was such an excellent standard that I'm just pleased for them actually, really pleased for them.

(gentle music) - [Joan] Taking into account both the submission and today's painting, the judges must now make a difficult decision.

- Now, Haidee-Jo's submission made me happy.

- [Kate] Mm.

- And her painting today makes me happy.

- Oh good.

I just wanna walk along that path and into that archway.

- [Kathleen] And away from all of us.

- Well.

(all laughing) - Today, at that brief spell of sunshine we had, she was able to capture the way light catches in grass, in the undergrowth and through these bits of ruins and she's done it very evocatively.

- She's found somewhere quiet, understated, which is very much in tune with her own approach to her painting.

So I think you've got a fantastic combination of composition setting with the artist's characteristics.

(gentle music) - [Joan] There's something very spooky about Carl's view of the abbey, isn't it?

It's the haunted abbey.

- I mean, we know that he's someone who conjures atmosphere, it's there in the submission.

Carl loves playing around with light, reducing things down into these sort of gray, monotone color palettes.

- Those grays running through the street scene and through the abbey are very similar, but the light is very different in both of them that he can do that with the same reduced palette is quite extraordinary.

(gentle music) - Fuji's submission is just such a wonderful thing.

I feel like I haven't had my money's worth yet.

I just wanna keep looking at it.

And I think today she found a really, really clever equivalent because she couldn't work to the same scale.

So she was able to just give us a slice of the action, as it were.

- Choosing that slice, she had enough elements to play with.

And, actually, all the mark making, just been reduced and exactly the same vocabulary, invented vocabulary.

I think it's extraordinary.

- [Joan] So has it been a good day?

- Mm.

I think we were impressed that we gave them something so spectacular and imposing, full of history.

And I think they all sort of found their solution of how to tackle it.

(gentle music) - Haidee-Jo, Carl, Fuji, you are all very good, but I'm afraid only one of you can go through to the semifinal.

- The judges have made their decision.

The artist they have selected is... - Carl Knibb.

(audience applauding and cheering) - It's a huge confidence boost.

I thought the work of the other artists was better.

And I thought it was beautiful.

I didn't expect this in a million years.

- Made it moody, just bordering on a bit of Gothic.

It told a story.

And I think there's only one criticism really and it's he needs to be more positive.

You need to have a little bit more faith in yourself!

Well done.

- Carl is a brilliant painter.

The light changed for all the artists and what he did, he pushed the painting further.

He started making something up.

It worked in a different way, which I hadn't expected and was even better.

So that's why he's a worthy winner, definitely.

- I'm shocked.

I've been down on myself all day.

Clearly, I need to be a little bit more positive next time.

(gentle music)