Sarah Pickstone is an English artist. She has won the John Moores Painting Prize and the Rome Prize for painting.
Early life
editPickstone was born in Manchester.[1] She studied at University of Newcastle and Royal Academy Schools.[2]
Career
editPickstone won the Rome Prize for painting in 1991, subsequently spending a year at the research centre the British School at Rome.[2]
She won the John Moores Painting Prize in 2012, having been a runner up in 2004.[3] This made her the first female winner of the prize since Lisa Milroy over thirty years earlier. Pickstone's winning painting, Stevie Smith and the Willow, was based on an illustration accompanying Smith's 1957 poem “Not Waving But Drowning”.[1] Pickstone said the painting's depiction of a girl bathing under a willow tree "might represent some kind of everywoman - an artist or mother or child", and while the poem is "very dark", she wanted to "make something more joyous out of the poem" with her painting. Judge for the prize, Fiona Banner, said of the work: "It's [...] a painting of one artist reflected through another, a meeting of literary and pictorial minds".[1]
Stevie Smith and the Willow is one of a series of Pickstone's works inspired by writing with connections to Regent's Park in London. Pickstone subsequently published an anthology of these paintings and others' writing, Park Notes, with Daunt Books in 2014.[4][5] It followed a 2013 exhibition at the New Art Centre, The Writers Series.[2] The exhibition referenced an all-female selection of writers including George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and Sylvia Plath.[6]
In 2015 she exhibited a show, The Rehearsal, at Mercer Gallery in Harrogate. It featured works inspired by Laura Knight's Ready for Rehearsal, a drawing in the Mercer's collection which depicts dancers backstage.[7] That same year, Contemporary Art Society supported the gallery's acquisition of six of Pickstone's paintings of literary women. These were exhibited at the gallery as part of its 2018 Picturing Women show.[8]
Pickstone works from a studio at Cubitt in London.[2] She is a senior faculty member at Royal Drawing School.[3]
References
edit- ^ a b c "John Moores Painting Prize won by Sarah Pickstone". BBC News. 2012-09-14. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
- ^ a b c d "Sarah Pickstone". The Royal Drawing School. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
- ^ a b "Sarah Pickstone". Royal Academy. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
- ^ Adams, Tim (2014-06-22). "Park Notes review – beautifully crafted ruminations on Regent's Park". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
- ^ Curtis, Nick (2014-07-04). "An artist's curious picture of Regent's Park". Evening Standard.
- ^ Sherwin, Skye (2013-04-05). "Rachel Whiteread, Stephen Hurrel, Peter Halley: the week's art shows in pictures". the Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
- ^ "Sarah Pickstone unveils new art at Mercer Gallery". Harrogate Advertiser. 2015-04-16. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
- ^ "New Mercer Art Gallery exhibition marks 100 years of votes for women". Harrogate Informer. 2018-01-10. Retrieved 2024-12-11.