Arty alumnus

18 June 2009

Former LJMU visual arts student Peter Monkman has won the coveted BP Portrait Award for an oil-painting of his 12-year old daughter.

Now in its 30th year, the BP Portrait Award is one of the most prestigious portrait competitions in the world and highlights the best in contemporary painting.

Peter, who is now Director of Art at Charterhoue School Surrey, won £25,000 and a commission worth £4,000. The winning painting, entitled Changeling 2, is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of the BP Portrait Award exhibition. The piece forms part of a series of portraits Peter has painted of Anna at different stages of her life. Peter commented "I challenge the fixed notion of an idealised image of childhood and substitute it for a more unsettling, complex representation that exists in its own right as a painting."

The initial idea for the winning portrait came from photographs of Anna playing in woods in Brittany, France, where the light had a "magical quality".

Chair of the judging panel and National Portrait Gallery director Sandy Nairne said: "This is a superb, magical portrait - a very worthy winner for the BP Portrait Award."