Landscape Artist of the Year 2024 – my experience as a wild card

To share with you the excitement of the whole Landscape Artist of the Year experience, I need to go back to May 2023. I was on holiday in Wales when I received an email saying that I hadn’t got into the main competition, but I could apply as a Wild Card.

I waited until the specified time, clicked the button to apply to be a wild card at the Liverpool Waterfront – and a few days later I received an email saying I had been accepted!!!!

I was so shocked, I had to go off by myself for a while to kind of straighten my head out. So many thoughts, could I do it?

To answer that question, I visited Liverpool waterfront to check out the venue…. I was so overwhelmed; I don’t usually paint buildings or cityscapes and there wasn’t any solace in trying to find a bit of a natural view, everything was glass and stone and pavements.

Anyway, I took some photos and headed back home feeling depressed and worried that I would look like a complete fool.

Finally, I pulled myself together and realised I would need to practise painting buildings so I spent a whole week working from the photos I had taken whilst there to try and get a sense of how I could approach this monumental task.

It took a while but by the end of the week I was feeling much more confident but even on the morning of the event I still didn’t know which way I would go but I decided to not worry about it and see what would happen.

On the Day

We had to get there for a 7am start, so at 7.15 my partner and I finally got to the starting point where everyone was queuing up to have their canvasses stamped and inspected. I had 2 trolleys of stuff, and I hadn’t factored in how hard it would be pulling the trolleys over the cobblestones, by the time we got there I was already exhausted.

I did have a large selection of gessoed boards of different sizes to give myself options, slight overkill, (I felt a bit of a twit) and it took ages for them to stamp them all but eventually I was let through with my wristband and my huge collection of apparatus.

Then we waited and waited whilst the day got hotter and hotter…….

Eventually we were told that we had to go back to the entrance to the docks and walk to the area where we would be painting for the day so they could film us arriving; back over the cobblestones dragging all my worldly art goods behind me!

I was one of the last to get to the area and found there wasn’t any space on the dock edges.  I grumpily plonked my trolley further along that we were supposed to be so at least I had a view of the dockside. I chose to bring my sturdy adjustable easel that has 4 legs so it wouldn’t be blown over if there was a wind blowing in along the river, which there had been when I first visited. That proved to be a very sound choice because a breeze did pick up in the afternoon and the sound of easels blowing over was like gunshots. 

I decided to start with my A1 cradled boards, divided into 6 sections with masking tape; this was to give the idea of looking out of windows onto different views. I used a big brush and sloshed the paint on, reminding myself by looking at my submission piece to keep moving, not getting into any intricate detail too soon.

I used every art material that I had, acrylic paint, oil stick, graphite, charcoal, ink and just kept adding layers, spraying with water, scraping back until images appeared.

After about an hour and a half I felt I had finished so I started another one, this time with more of a pink base.

It was at this point that the crew asked me if I would like to be interviewed by Stephen Mangan – as if I would say no!

The camera crew were right in front of me with a gang of people behind them and Stephen stood next to me and asked “Jan, what is going on? Are these 6 different paintings?” 

I talked about how I wanted the paintings to have energy and I wanted to represent the different views that I could see around me but the bit they kept in was me saying “Because I get bored!”

But at least I made an appearance and I was surprised that I didn’t look too sweaty, as by then the heat was blistering. Every time I touched my wooden board or smudged a mark by hand it burned my fingers.

Kate Bryan, one of the judges came by at least twice and said, “You’ve had a good day.” So, I started to think I was in with a chance.

I completed 2 paintings, and I still had an hour to go! I started on a third painting, this time just one view but by then I knew I had no more energy left. I had concentrated so hard on the 2 paintings that I had nothing left to give so I spent the rest of the time wandering round, looking at the other wildcard paintings, and having a bit of a rest.

If you have seen the episode, you will know that I wasn’t chosen as a winner, Sue Billings won with her view of the docks – it is a beautiful painting.

I really enjoyed the day, I watched the final judging of the pod painters and then managed to drag all of my stuff back to the car and then had a bit of a celebration in Liverpool before falling into bed!