(jaunty orchestral music) - Hello from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London.

- This former industrial site was transformed into the home of the 2012 Olympic Games.

Brilliant preparation for the elite competitive event it's playing host to today.

- Preparing to strain every artistic muscle for peak performance are seven finely tuned artists, three fair and sporting judges, and two lithe and limber presenters.

We're going for gold.

It's the semifinal of "Landscape Artist of the Year."

From thousands who applied to the competition, just 36 artists were selected.

- Charged off and ready, I hope.

- [Stephen] Over six demanding heats, they've been faced with some spectacular, but challenging, views.

- An apple tree.

- Yes.

- We bring you along to see a sensational building.

- It's a sensational house.

I don't, sorry.

- [Stephen] Inventive in the face of competition... - Ooh, I just love that.

I always just want to do it myself.

- [Stephen] Painting under pressure to complete their artwork in just four hours.

- Can you just give us an extra hour?

- I'm getting crampy in my fingers.

(laughs) (audience cheering) - [Joan] Now only the winners from each heat remain, vying for three places in the final.

- [Stephen] And for the ultimate winner, there's a prestigious prize, a 10,000-pound commission to capture the rugged, natural beauty of South Snowdonia for the National Trust.

(dramatic orchestral music) - [Joan] But to claim that coveted prize, the artist must impress our ever-observant judges, award-winning artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg, independent curator Kathleen Soriano, and art historian Kate Bryan.

- Did you learn anything from being with us in the heats that you're bringing to bear today?

- Yes, that four hours isn't very long.

- [Kate] Ah.

- [Stephen] Just three of our semifinalists will go through to this year's final, (painter sighs) but to be successful today, they'll have to dig deep.

- This is like a nod towards what's underneath.

They found remains of humans.

- Wow, well, if that thunder and lightning gets any worse, they might find our remains quite soon.

(bright instrumental music) (jaunty orchestral music) Competing in today's semifinal at London's Olympic Park are three professional artists: Clare Lord, Dougie Adams, and Ophelia Redpath.

- I just want to give it as much as I did last time, which was probably about 150%.

(laughs) - [Joan] And joining them are three amateur artists: Kalpna Saksena, Ben MacGregor, and Shelagh Caseborne.

- It's amazing to be here in the semifinal today.

I'm feeling slightly terrified.

There are quite a lot of strange structures around, but really looking forward to getting going.

(bright instrumental music) - [Stephen] And at each of the heats, a throng of wildcards also took part, demonstrating an array of talents... - I draw with my feet.

- You draw with your feet?

- [Painter] Yeah.

- [Stephen] For the chance of just one place at the semifinal.

- You are the winner of the wildcard.

(crowd cheers) - Good show, everyone.

- [Judge] Congratulations.

(laughs) - [Stephen] With the judges selecting Louise Gillard as their overall wildcard winner.

- Just loved your light.

- [Stephen] Whose painting of the grounds of Chartwell in Kent secured her place in a pod.

- Well done.

Louise stood out because there's a kind of completeness to her vision, from the cropping of the landscape, which was kind of courageous.

We thought she just brought it down to a square of green, To a way she applies paint, And it was just a feeling of here's an artist with a voice and an interesting artistic vision.

She's confident.

She's got a developed sense of style.

She'll be really great in one of the pods.

- To be in the semifinal, firstly, I'm really shocked to be here, but I'm also really excited and keen to get going.

(gentle music) - Artists, we hope you are feeling inspired by this Olympic view and are feeling on top of your game.

As it's the semifinal, the judges are expecting personal bests from you all.

- As usual, you have four hours to complete your landscapes.

On your marks.

Get set.

Go.

(bright orchestral music) (camera shutter clicking) Perched above the River Lea, the artists are facing a view created entirely within the last decade, featuring the architectural legacies of London's 2012 Olympic Games surrounded by modern high-rise construction.

- We've chosen a fantastic location for our semifinal today.

We've got a scene that has everything in it.

It's got this dystopian architecture, it's got nature, it's got the possibilities for reflections, and we have a fantastic sculpture, the ArcelorMittal Tower right in the center of it.

All seven of our artists today in the semifinal have really earned their place here, so what we really want to see today is we want to see a bit of range, we want to see them being brave, and ultimately, we want to see a painting that gives us a distinctive sense of who they are as artists.

(jaunty music) - [Joan] The thick haze engulfing today's location presents an additional challenge for the artists.

- The view is great, even given that it's misty.

This particular urban landscape is quite abstract, squares and rectangles and bits sticking up and things that you think, how does that building work?

- It's kind of an honor to paint this landscape, to be honest, I've got butterflies in my stomach right now 'cause it was such a big deal, the Olympics in this country.

It was kind of magical, really.

- We've got some scary structures, which I'm trying to ignore.

I tend to do most of my painting in the countryside, so it's nothing like this, that's for sure.

- [Stephen] Amateur artist Shelagh Caseborne took early retirement from a career in publishing to study fine art as a mature student.

At Chartwell in Kent, Shelagh impressed the judges with her choice of composition, drawing the eye up the canvas to the imposing house.

- Shelagh.

- Hi.

- How are you doing?

I see you sorted out the composition of the drawing.

- [Shelagh] Yeah.

It's quite a lot to think about here.

- See, I see you've gone right up to the reflections under the bridge to avoid the emptiness here.

- Yep, I think there's a picture in the river because there's lovely light there, and there's also some interesting pathways.

Buildings keep coming and going in the far distance, so hopefully they'll come again.

- [Tai-Shan] Oh, because of the weather.

- Yeah, they keep disappearing, but there's some quite nice shapes, so I had sketched them in here, but they've disappeared again slightly.

- [Tai-Shan] They have, haven't they?

- So, just anchoring things in the right place, really.

It's really important part of my process.

- It is.

It looks great.

And you're right.

What we liked about your work was the considerations given to the composition, how the eye works through it, so yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how this happens, how it becomes without any of the usual sunlight.

- Well, I don't know.

- This could be a new Shelagh- - Could be.

- Painting.

- Cool, yeah.

(laughs) (gentle instrumental music) - I've started by looking at the horizon and finding a couple of buildings that I like.

These buildings are kind of slightly looming out of the mist.

It's quite atmospheric, but there's all sorts of cranes and trees, and so I'm going to have trouble working out what to put in and what to leave out.

- Ophelia Redpath is a professional artist from Hertfordshire.

Although she usually paints imagined landscapes, her interpretation of Hackney's West Reservoir captivated the judges, winning her heat.

Ophelia, it is a huge landscape.

So many elements to it.

How did you set about it?

- [Ophelia] The thing that gets me going is the colors first, so there were lot of gray shapes, but then there was this lovely diagonally-constructed red building, so I thought, well, I'll kind of make that a focus.

- Are you passing on the Anish Kapoor piece?

- I'm terrified of it.

(laughs) It's so- - It's very complex.

- [Ophelia] Big and complex, yeah, so that is a challenge which I might forego.

- [Joan] What about the river?

- I paint the river last because the sky's gonna change all the time and the reflections will change, as well.

But I think the nice thing about oils is that you can go over things, so you can add light or make it darker.

- [Joan] So, what will happen is that your painting will have its own weather.

- Yes, that's a really good way of putting it, yeah.

(jaunty orchestral music) - It'll be a first time that I've painted, like, an urban landscape.

I might struggle with the buildings and the cranes.

I'll be more comfortable with the water and the greenery, but there is quite a lot of greenery, so I have to make sure that's not dominating the whole scene.

- [Stephen] Professional artist Dougie Adams only took up painting in 2016 after completing three tours of Afghanistan with the Grenadier Guards.

His muted color palette and accomplished depiction of the reflections on the lake at West Wickham secured his place at this year's semifinal.

- [Kathleen] I feel like we've given you a gift, Dougie, with all this water.

You've got reflection again.

- I have, yes.

- Are you happy about that?

- I am.

- [Kathleen] And you've given us everything in this view.

You've got the water in.

You've got the greenery at the sides.

- I wanted a bit of distance.

- Okay.

- And I think the water will do that.

- [Kathleen] What are the big problems that you are anticipating in the work today?

- Maybe the fiddly parts, the buildings.

I'm not used to that.

Architecture is not my strong point.

- Oh, is it first time, is it?

- First time.

- Wow.

They look quite far away to me, so there's not gonna be too much detail, is there?

- [Dougie] No, just a steady hand.

I'm not very steady.

- [Kathleen] Different brushes?

- [Dougie] Different, I've got new brushes.

- Smaller brushes?

- Yeah.

- [Kathleen] Especially for the semifinal.

- Yeah.

- It's like having a new uniform on the first day of school.

- That's it.

(laughs) (jaunty orchestral music) - [Joan] For one artist, the urban architecture is inspiring a new artistic technique.

- I love what I'm seeing in terms of structure, but today I think I'm going to move a few things around and I'm going to do a different approach to painting.

Rather than painting in the objects, I'm going to be revealing them by taking away the extra layers I'm going to put on.

- [Joan] Amateur artist Kalpna Saksena is a former city accountant who now spends her time painting industrial and urban landscapes.

She won her heat at Stoke Newington's West Reservoir with her evocative multilayered cityscape.

(gentle orchestral music) - Kalpna, you've put the fantastic Anish Kapoor sculpture just slightly to the right.

- To the right.

- [Kate] Now you've started putting on paint, using these great colors to rough the whole thing out.

- Mm, and I'm going to try the taking away style, and then the next layer is going to be oil on top.

- Right.

- Which will allow me to draw into it.

If I have enough acrylic behind, I'll then draw in with towels to reveal the underneath layer.

- Oh.

- I hope, well, that's the plan.

- So, you go acrylic first, then oil.

- Yeah.

- And then you can start subtracting, using towels.

- Take away the oil, yeah.

- [Kate] Nice, so a reductive approach.

- [Kalpna] So, hopefully I can reveal those shapes rather than- - [Kate] Than actually have to mark them.

- Than draw them in.

- Because it could be too fussy for you.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

Why aren't you using the same method, just out of curiosity?

- I didn't want to do the same thing again.

- [Kate] Okay, and I admire that.

I think that's good.

- I hope it turns into a painting from it.

- Me, too.

Me, too.

(jaunty orchestral music) - The seven artists are one hour into their semifinal challenge and important decisions are being made.

So, Ophelia, are you going to play with reality again?

- Yes.

- Are we going to see you moving stuff around?

- Yes.

- And you had an owl in your submission.

Are we going to see a penguin or a- (both laugh) What are we going go see?

Are we going to see a bird today?

- A penguin.

I was thinking I don't know how surreal we're allowed to get.

(laughs) (jaunty orchestral music) - I may not have much space for the river.

Trying to see where I can put it, where it works.

Even if I move the things around and overlay them, I think I'll need more space, and I was wishing I brought a big canvas, twice the size.

- I'm quite excited 'cause I've just seen a red bus go over that bridge, so that's a little flash of color that maybe could come in later on.

Otherwise it's a symphony of kind of grays and sludgy greens.

(energetic orchestral music) (bright orchestral music) (suspenseful music) - [Joan] Here at London's Olympic Park, our seven semifinalists are into the second hour of today's challenge.

(suspenseful piano music) - I think the view is fantastic.

There's a lot of options here.

There's lots to paint.

I'm quite used to the architecture and so on, but there's quite a lot of, you know, hard structures.

I thought, they're not going to make us paint The Orbit because it's really complicated, but actually, it's in the distance, so it's okay.

- [Joan] Louise Gillard is a professional artist from London and this year's wildcard winner.

Her painting of Chartwell in Kent won the judges' vote for its luminous depiction of the lush, verdant Woodland.

- Louise.

How do you feel about this kind of modern London landscape as opposed to something which is sort of very green and beautiful?

- [Louise] Well, I like painting cranes.

They give a nice kind of vertical to, you know.

- [Kate] Right, well, you're well, then.

- The horizontal of the bridge, so I'm really pleased about the cranes.

I live in London, so I paint London mostly, so this is perfect, but I was really grappling with sky or water, and it looks like I've ended up mostly with sky.

So, let's hope it doesn't change too much.

- [Kate] Well, yeah, it's a strange morning because- - Very odd.

- We've got all those kind of intensely gray skies that are too bright to look at.

- [Louise] I don't mind this at all.

- [Kate] So, you like cranes, you like a bright gray sky, so we're kind of really delivering for you this morning, Louise.

- You've given me everything I need.

The worry will be when lots of clouds come over and we have to change everything.

- [Kate] It's a nice start.

Well done.

(intense piano music) - Today, I'm painting on exactly the same size canvas as I did last time.

It's not a traditional landscape.

The square forces me to mess with the composition a bit more, not be tempted to get sucked into painting exactly what I see in front of me.

- [Stephen] Ben MacGregor is a builder from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, painting abstract landscapes in his spare time.

His re-imagining of the view of the grounds at Chartwell won him his heat, impressing the judges with his expressionistic style.

- [Tai-Shan] Ben, I see you've split the canvas up again into the magic golden ratio.

- Yeah.

- It really seems to be your go-to substructure.

- [Ben] Yeah, it's a great foundation for me.

It brings, like, a similarity to each painting, I think.

- Your paintings are generally very full.

- Yeah.

- Here, we've given you huge expense of the Lea River.

Is that a problem having that much emptiness in the center of your composition?

- [Ben] Not necessarily.

I will just clip it and make it claustrophobic, which is like my, my go-to.

- Your middle name.

I love it.

Okay.

Is the Anish Kapoor Orbit your narrative or have you found something else in there?

- [Ben] It's going to be one of the narratives.

I'm going to tell a few different stories in this one.

What they had to do to kind of prepare the site, I know there was a lot of digging and lot of archeology, and so I might try and sort of bring that in somewhere.

- [Tai-Shan] That could be quite surreal.

- Yeah, well, surreal is, that's what I'm trying to.

- That's what you're aiming for.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Tai-Shan] I'm really intrigued.

(bouncy music) - [Joan] Despite the grayness of the weather, one artist is finding inspiration and vibrant color.

- I love the buildings.

The bit that I'm drawn to is this mixture of red and green and then the blues behind, and my most recent treat is this tube of cobalt turquoise, which is probably the most expensive tube of paint I've ever bought, but is a gorgeous color.

I think it might be useful today.

- [Joan] Clare Lord is a professional artist and former head teacher from Yorkshire.

Her large-scale depiction of West Wickham House in Buckinghamshire won her her heat, impressing the judges with its close-up composition and bold use of vibrant color.

- So, Clare, the palette at the moment, it's quite colorful, and actually when I look out at it, it's bleached, in a way, because of this strange white light that we've got at the moment, and you've raised the register.

- Yeah.

I do paint what I see.

People often say it's a bit bright, but it is how I see.

- Okay.

All right.

- It gets in my eyes.

- I'm going to need your glasses.

- Or my brain.

- [Kathleen] And no fear of greens.

I can see such a range of greens that you've got already.

- I'll just show you something.

- You've got your green chart.

Woo.

My goodness.

Do these codes sort of tell you what you need to mix together in order to get them?

- [Clare] Yeah, so it's yellow, ochre, lemon, and cadmium yellow.

- [Kathleen] So, no drawing on the canvas, so it was straight on with the paint.

- [Clare] No, draw with the color.

- [Kathleen] Okay.

Fine.

- [Clare] I mean, I am drawing really now.

- Great.

Well.

- Thank you.

- Amazing.

Good luck.

Fingers crossed.

- Fingers crossed, yeah.

(bright orchestral music) - [Stephen] It's semifinal day, so you've thrown everything at them.

- I think today's view is one of the best views.

I would love to paint here, actually.

I mean, there's so much happening, and it's sort of happening on different levels of focus, of texture.

There's all these reflections, which aren't too obvious or really interesting.

It has got that feeling of slightly sort of surreal or otherworldly, and they're actually floating above the landscape.

They're sitting above the river.

It gives them a fantastic vantage point.

You like your London rivers in, don't you?

- [Stephen] I love my London rivers.

I don't know 'em this close to West Ham, but I like them.

What would interest you in this landscape?

- [Tai-Shan] The possibility of abstraction.

- [Stephen] Ah, okay.

- [Tai-Shan] Because it is so weird and you've got these strange elements within it.

- This is a very particular kind of light, isn't it?

It's very, sort of, is murky a word you'd use to describe it?

- Murky or, in artistic terms, silvery.

- Silvery.

- Silvery.

- [Stephen] Does it make things difficult?

- [Tai-Shan] I think it does, because when you structure things, you need light and shade to make things, you know, feel voluminous, and here, there isn't any of that.

- [Stephen] Some of the structures are really unusual.

I mean, The Orbit, it's hard to ignore for the artists, isn't it?

- It is overpowering and it is in the reflection, as well.

So, yeah, it has to be dealt with, but it's a kind of problem really worth solving.

To paint It would be just fabulous.

We've really given them a bone to grapple with.

And you know, we want our artists to give us something that is unusual and surprising, and I think this is perfect for the semifinals.

(suspenseful music) - [Stephen] Here in the Olympic Park, the artists are two hours into their four-hour semifinal challenge, and like all elite competitors, they're keen to stay on track.

So, Kalpna, what is that thing can see there?

- [Kalpna] That's my to-do list.

- Oh, your to-do list.

Early stage and late stage are emerge from arc, tone, and hue with immediate adjacents.

What?

(both laugh) - I don't know.

- [Stephen] Is that because you're worried you might just forget what to do?

- [Kalpna] 'Cause sometimes you just get happy and you carry on painting and you kind of keep putting on this lovely paint.

- You should have make it through to the final at the bottom, shouldn't you?

As the final?

- That's just too much.

- That's unwritten, that moment, so we'll see.

(Kalpna laughing) - I'm still working on the above-the-horizon skyline.

I've got quite a lot of detail to do.

I'm a little bit concerned thinking about the ticking clock.

(expectant music) - I don't feel yet that I've got it to a point where I can work on the things I want to pull out.

So, I haven't got to that point yet.

So, I'd feel a lot happier if I had.

Just needed lots more time.

(expectant music) (bright theme music) (energetic orchestral music) - [Stephen] Here on the bridge over the Lea River at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the artists are entering the third hour of their four-hour challenge, and as the haze begins to lift, the busy skyline is slowly being revealed.

- Louise, it looks like you're painting exactly what's in front of you to each detailed crane.

- [Louise] Yes, I like everything to be in the right place.

I must admit I wouldn't move things around, but hopefully I'll be a bit expressive with how I render the objects.

- And what bout the sky?

Are you going to- - Oh.

Yeah.

- [Kathleen] It's been troublesome, hasn't it?

- I'm going to leave it until the very last minute to decide whether to go darker with the style or not because that changes every 10 minutes.

Bit of a risky strategy.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

- [Kathleen] Well done.

(expectant music) - Shelagh, this is a beautiful vista you've created.

You really wanted to use the canal to give us a pathway.

- I did, because there's so much terrific light on that water.

The sky and the water are just the stars of the show.

- Right, and I can see you've already started to detail with the water.

It's like, you can't wait.

- I just wanted to catch the light areas.

I don't think they'll change, but I thought it was quite important to try and get those in there.

(bright music) - It's weird.

It's like you've painted knowing the light is going to just lift a bit, because it was very, very gray.

It had that kind of it had this kind of gray, silveriness to it.

- Yes.

Sometimes I oversee the dark.

- [Tai-Shan] Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Clare] I think that's partly why I work in these layers.

- [Tai-Shan] Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Clare] And because it's this sort of hazy day, the thinner paint gives that sort of misty transparency that seems to work quite well.

- You've got a very nice blue, which you've used up here, I think.

Is that it?

- [Clare] Yeah, cobalt turquoise.

- [Tai-Shan] And I'm looking at your pallette and in the thinness of the paint.

It's very beautiful.

- [Clare] Thank you.

(bright orchestral music) - Well, we're halfway through.

What surprises me is how true they are to their own style.

- I think we've also got seven confident artists and I think that's another reason why their style is consistent.

You know, they're experienced.

- [Joan] Shelagh.

She has chosen to give us an extended landscape today.

- Shelagh's composition is quite traditional.

I like this passageway.

I mean, the passageway of the staircase of Chartwell was successful, and I do think that there is a journey in through the canal.

I think at the moment it's lacking a bit of oomph.

- Oh, I think Shelagh's been able to conjure that sense of atmosphere.

As you look into the picture plane and across the landscape, there is a sense of heat and humidity in the air.

It's this sort of wispy, rather romantic view, and I think it works very well.

- Well, now, Ben is quite clearly a man of swirling paint.

- [Kathleen] I love Ben's work.

I'm fascinated by the sort of the dirtiness of the paint, and it's given us a cross-section of the landscape, sort of archeological remains in the front section of the painting.

So, he's added this other dimension to the work.

- It is very dense, isn't it?

- It is, and I think he's interested to give us that denseness to reflect the claustrophobia that you can have in a city life, but that claustrophobia is counterbalanced with the fact that he's really gone for green.

I love the way that he has mashed up the scene.

I love the way he puts the paint down.

- Kalpna has always loved buildings and, of course, she's gone for the Kapoor.

- She's played around with the positioning of the buildings and with the ArcelorMittal Tower.

As a consequence, we have that sort of breathless sort of suffocating claustrophobia.

She's been incredibly experimental today.

- I'm a bit worried that Kalpna's being too experimental because she hasn't actually tried this approach before.

She's doing layering with acrylics and oils, and then this reductive technique where she's taking the paint away.

She wanted to show us something different, but I'm wondering that it might be at the risk of the fantastic effect that she got in her heat painting.

- Now, Ophelia has a very idiosyncratic style.

- I think today's weather suits Ophelia's way of working perfectly.

She's found a beautiful sort of orangy, rust red building on the left that plays really nicely against the gray sky, and slowly, sort of this magical realm is opening up.

- [Kathleen] But what I find fascinating about Ophelia's work is she constructs this narrative, and it's not just through the objects that she chooses.

It's through the colors, it's the tonalities, the richness.

- Louise a wildcard, so how is she doing today?

- [Tai-Shan] Louise has very cleverly used the verticals in the landscape to pin the landscape in the foreground into a composition, and what we're seeing, which we saw on her wildcard painting, was a sense of touch that makes the light bounce off the foliage.

- I sort of can see Louise's happening before my eyes, because of this layering process that she does more and more and more paint.

It might be easier to do trees like that, but when it comes to detailed, fine architecture, she might run into a few problems.

- [Joan] Dougie, he does quiet landscape.

- Reflection's a big thing for Dougie.

I mean, that's what he's saving his coup de grace for, but he's never painted buildings before, so he's quite excited by it.

And I like the way in which he's sort of referenced them in the distance.

- Dougie wants to create space and atmosphere, and it's also underpinned by that denseness or the lowering of the tones.

I think it's a very beautiful atmosphere piece of painting.

- [Joan] Now, Clare has a very clear sense of structure.

Is it succeeding?

- She's actually avoided the river.

She's climbed out to the riverbank and she's in amongst the buildings, and it looks so beautiful in this translucent state.

Her next stage of layering is, of course, putting thick paint on.

Does she really want to spoil it?

- I think Clare really responds well to color.

I'm a bit worried about the size of Clare's painting.

She needs to get it really nicely resolved.

It might just be a little bit big to pull it off.

I don't know.

- I'm glad that so many of our artists today are actually taking risks.

- Yeah, they are.

- I'm really pleased that they've taken the views and they're playing with it so well.

- [Joan] Center stage in today's view stands the highest sculpture in the UK.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit created by Air Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond to celebrate the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics.

The landmark central concept is that of an orbit or continuous journey, reflecting the extraordinary efforts endured by Olympians and Paralympians to achieve new sporting records.

(stately orchestral music) - The ArcelorMittal Orbit came about because of a competition that was held by the then-mayor of London to have a tower for the Olympic park and, of course, that had to meet the requirements of the Olympic Delivery Authority that were delivering the games and creating this park, including recycled materials.

Their criteria was 50% of the steel had to be recycled, so there's old cars, there's old washing machines in that sculpture behind me.

- [Joan] Made from 20,000 tons of tubular steel, the construction of The Orbit was equally innovative.

- [Tudor] The pieces were manufactured in Bolton and brought to site, 600 different five-star-shaped nodes.

The sculpture was built without scaffolding.

It was a crane, the four guys piecing it together, two of them in harnesses bolting each section on as it was lifted into position by that crane.

It was quite an amazing achievement, and there was a great moment when the viewing platforms were finally lifted into position.

- [Joan] The observation platform stands at 450 feet high, providing 20-mile views across London, with a latter edition of a slide designed by artist Carsten Holler, the kinetic energy of the structure extends into another dimension, setting a new record for the longest and highest slide in the world.

(dramatic orchestral music) - As you walk around the sculpture, as you go down the slide, you're completely disoriented, and that was the intention: to create something that made you feel slightly destabilized and give you that excitement as you travel around it.

Anish chose the word Orbit because that's what you do.

You orbit around the sculpture and it orbits around you, but they also wanted to reflect the energy of the Olympic and the Paralympic Games here in the heart of the park.

(stately orchestral music) (energetic music) - [Peter] And in the heart of the park today, the seven semifinalists are just over three hours into the competition.

(energetic music) - I can't believe I've come in at a crucial moment.

That beautiful sight of the orange building, it has slowly disappeared in front of my eyes.

What are you doing?

- [Ophelia] Well, there is a tree in front of the building, and I was thinking, shall I leave the tree out?

But actually having a bit of green in front of that red is actually quite nice, but I've got to play around with it until I get the right sort of green.

- And you applied it in a very particular way that's a sort of very feathery search.

- It's kind of curly, yeah.

- [Kathleen] It gives you that sense of air that's sitting in amongst the branches, as well.

- [Ophelia] Yeah, that's really, yeah, that's the kind of feel that I'm trying to get.

- [Kathleen] And, of course, we're all desperate to see whether there's going to be a heron, a moorhen, and a phoenix.

- [Ophelia] I know, yes, maybe.

- [Kathleen] Some crazy- - Stephen suggested a penguin, so.

- A penguin, okay, right.

That would be completely ridiculous.

Don't do a penguin, please.

- I won't do a penguin.

- Okay, thank you.

All right.

(bright orchestral music) - Dougie, there were passages this morning when it was quite a bright sky.

The sun was kind of joining us, but you stuck with a very gray pallette, a very kind of somber tone, and now I can hear thunderstorms and see loads of gray clouds.

Is there something that you know that I don't know?

(laughs) - [Dougie] No, but I wanted to keep it a bit darker so I can keep it dark or go lighter.

- [Kate] Okay, so it was a practical decision.

- Yeah.

- Are there any parts that you're worried or nervous about?

- [Dougie] Maybe The Orbit.

I need to figure out what I'm doing with this.

- I mean, are you going to introduce the red?

It's quite harmonious situation you have here with all these grays and greens together.

What happens if you pop a bit of red in there?

- [Dougie] I think it'll work.

- [Kate] Okay.

Look forward to seeing that happen.

(bright orchestral music) - [Joan] The sky has been proving difficult for your artists all morning, (thunder rumbling) but now the dramatic weather brings an extra artistic challenge.

So, fun, painting in a thunderstorm, isn't it?

- It is, yeah.

It's a first for me.

- [Joan] But can you see it?

Because the cloud is getting in the way now.

- [Ben] I'm just going to go for it quite sort of impressionisticly.

I'm not going to try and get much detail out of it, I don't think.

- Your whole thing is very impressionistic, including the archeology underground here.

- [Ben] I like the skeleton representing the finite nature of life, basically.

- [Joan] And the rest is done with great, swooping brushstrokes.

- [Ben] Yeah, I wanted it to give it, like, movement and drama and kind of weirdness, really.

Want it to be as weird as possible.

- Well, don't let the rain get you down.

(Ben laughs) - I'll try not to.

(expectant music) (thunder rumbling) (expectant music) - The view doesn't look anything like it did at all before.

The question now is, do you go with what you're seeing in the moment or do you change it?

(dramatic orchestral music) - I would like to go over there and have a good look at it in the rain just to see if anything really leaps out at me.

I wouldn't say it's going to plan, exactly.

(dramatic orchestral music) - I think I've got a few problems.

I don't think is going well.

Tactic to deconstruct wasn't particularly clever for today, and especially with a structure like this.

(dramatic orchestral music) (bright theme music) (bouncy orchestral music) (rain pattering) - [Stephen] Here in London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, our seven semifinalists are nearing the end of their four-hour challenge with an untimely downpour continuing to make its presence felt.

- Louise, has the rain helped or hindered?

- The good thing is I can barely see The Orbit now, so I'm going to paint it through the rain.

Less detail.

And the bad thing is it did change everything I'd done with the water, so I had to alter that.

- So, you're still pretending it's a sunny day, although I can't hear you above the rain.

- [Louise] Well, muted sunny day.

- [Stephen] And the rain is hindering other last-minute details.

- That red tower on the right-hand side is now really a lot lighter than it was when I first painted it, so I'm just concerned that I might not get it to a place where I feel that it's resolved, but hopefully I will.

I think I will.

(dramatic orchestral music) (rain pattering) - I just want to bring some life into this picture so I've just done this little drawing on here of a dog and then I'm covering it with paint and then I'm printing it onto the canvas.

And it's very, very wet on the surface of the canvas, so I don't know if it's going to stick, but let's hope.

(dramatic orchestral music) - Artists, your semifinal marathon is nearly over.

You have five minutes left.

(dramatic orchestral music) - I'm hoping that it's going to capture the atmosphere today, but I'll be going to the wire.

(dramatic orchestral music) (rain pattering) - So, the bit I normally love painting, I'm just beginning to do that now, and I'm not sure I can suggest enough to really call it complete.

(dramatic orchestral music) (rain pattering) - Trying to put some ripples in the water.

Time is running out fast.

(dramatic orchestral music) (rain pattering) - Artists, your time is up and your challenge is over.

- Please put down your brushes and step away from your artwork.

(onlookers applauding) - I'm feeling quite relieved, now it's finished.

I think the ending, the rain kind of put me off a little bit, but no, I am happy with what I did.

- [Joan] The judges will select just three artists to go through to the final.

- My goodness.

All of our artists today had to contend with this sort of white, blinding light that sucked the color out of a lot of the elements that we'd given them, although some of them really have managed to pull it out.

- I think Shelagh's really showed us her range.

Her treatment of the architecture is so successful because she doesn't allow it to become too fussy, too detailed, too angular.

There's a softness there I think works beautifully.

- The last hour or so, she teased out the details in the building, she worked on the sky, and suddenly we have this very subtle pre-Impressionist French landscape, really.

- With Ben's painting, there's a real sort of physicality to it.

You really feel that sort of physical presence of the artist.

The idea of the cross-section that got underneath the skin of this place was such a clever idea.

- The idea is great because it is such a strange landscape, but as day progressed, this space got more and more filled up with signs and symbols.

I know he looks for claustrophobia, but now I feel it's too much.

- Mm, Kalpna was really brave to do something that she hadn't done before.

Certainly, there are passages in there that I could look at for a really long time.

Some of her buildings are just beautiful.

I just love the lightness of touch in order to give that structure sense and meaning.

I think she made a compositional mistake to give such prominence to The Orbit.

- I'm quite fascinated by it and by the way in which she built it, but when I see it as part of the whole work, it's too dominating in a way that feels separate from the rest of the work.

- Ophelia stuck to type and to produced something which is very gloomy, atmospheric.

What works, of course, is that beautiful red building.

I have a problem with the dog, which I find pushes the painting from something very atmospheric into the illustrative.

- Ophelia finds very interesting equivalence for what's in front of her, so she's able to reduce the information down without becoming graphic or stylized or flat.

She reduces the information but keeps it super interesting.

I have been going backwards and forwards about the dog since she put him in, but now I'm looking at it, I can't imagine the painting without it.

- Louise.

I love the verticality of the sky.

That blinding light of gray-whiteness that we had today, that is the way it looked.

- [Tai-Shan] In her wildcat painting, the marks varied in size, and there was a different rhythm.

Here, I find the green even has the same rhythm throughout, so there's kind of repetitiveness to it.

Having said that, I think the water is incredibly believable as is that light coming from the sky.

The sky is luminous.

- Dougie did so well with buildings that he's not really dealt with before.

I love the suggestion of them, actually, and I also really like the composition and the fact that he gave us so much of the land and so little of the sky, and that sky, again, really has a sense of today.

- The grays and the greens are beautiful.

They sit together very harmoniously.

It's about an absence of light, really, isn't it?

I don't know if I like it as much as the other two paintings I saw from him, if I'm honest.

- Now, Clare's gone really bold and big today.

In West Wickham, we were sort of pressed up against the subject.

Here, she's given us a bit of space, and although there are beautiful passages of paint, the painterliness of the landscape in the bottom half is sort of undermined by that sort of concentration on architectural detail.

- [Kathleen] I really love the color combination.

I really like that reflection in the water, and the fact that it's sort of chopped off in that bottom right-hand side, and the fact that she's gone big.

You know, she took risks today.

- I felt that a lot of these paintings went through different incarnations today.

Some of them were ugly ducklings this morning and have become quite beautiful, and other ones have gone in a different direction.

- Some of our artists strove a bit too much today and some of them pulled it off or showed us a bit more of what they could do.

- [Stephen] Of the seven artists, Only three can make it through to the final.

- So, we really like this.

That is really beautiful (indistinct).

- [Kathleen] Yeah, I'm happy with that one.

- Yeah, this we love.

- [Kathleen] That's a definite.

I like that one.

- [Tai-Shan] Yeah.

- If we go with those ones, we've got a diversity of style and approach.

- [Kathleen] Yeah.

(dramatic orchestral music) (rain pattering) - Artists, to have reached this stage in the competition is a really impressive achievement, so we congratulate each one of you on your outstanding talent.

- But as you know, the judges can only select three artists to go through to the final, and they have reached their decision.

The first artist who will be competing in the final is... (dramatic orchestral music) Ophelia Redpath.

(onlookers cheering) - The second artist... (suspenseful orchestral music) is Clare Lord.

(onlookers cheering) - The third artist to reach the final is... (upbeat orchestral music) Shelagh Caseborne.

(onlookers cheering) - Our commiserations to the rest of you.

It doesn't mean that you didn't go outstanding work and that we don't appreciate that, too, so thank you to you, as well.

(all applauding) - I'm feeling completely stunned.

What just happened there?

I have no idea.

Absolutely amazing.

(laughs) - Well done.

Get the penguin in next week.

- I am so thrilled to have got through to the final.

I'm still kind of pinching myself.

I just can't quite believe it.

It really is a confidence boost.

(group applauding) - That 23-pound tube of cobalt turquoise earned its keep today.

I'm extremely excited about the prospect of what is to come and slightly gobsmacked about having gone through to the final.

- We picked three artists that are like fine wine.

It's a really good blend of artists.

They all cover an element of art that we want to see in the future.

- The ones that we chose today stood out because they showed experience and maturity by sticking solidly to their style, but also really leaving us wanting to see what they could do the next round.

- Yeah.

(bright orchestral music) (stately orchestral music) (dramatic Sky theme music)