This year’s panel of judges, which includes Maggi Hambling, has shortlisted three oil paintings from 2024: Tim Benson’s Cliff, Outreach Worker, a Black man with a broken jaw who is staring into the distance, his face worked and reworked by a wide, flat brush; Moira Cameron’s A Life Lived, a self-portrait in which the artist sits slumped in a turquoise armchair, her eyes fixed on a point just past the viewer; and Martyn Harris’s Memories, a hyper-realistic painting of an older woman, her hands interlinked, her nose apparently red with cold. It is perhaps a sign of the current moment that all three figures appear tired. The paintings will be displayed alongside 43 others in this free exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery (10 July–12 October).
Find out more from the NPG’s website.
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