#BBC #HomeIsWhereTheArtIs and #CelebrityPaintingChallenge

After Bake Off and Celebrity Bake Off as well as the many cookery competition programmes; it looks like the analysts are looking to take painting into main stream TV. I wonder how many of you remember, 'Painting With Nancy' (Kominsky) from the 1970's and Hannah Gordon's 'Watercolour Challenge' first shown in 1998?

Sky has run Landscape Artist of the Year and Portrait Artist of the Year for a while now and the BBC seem to be getting in on the act. First with their, Big Painting Challenge, where amateur painters tackle a variety of techniques in order to find the best painter.

​The recent Celebrity painting challenge, based on the same concept was fun to watch. The celebrities have a range of skills and they all seem to enjoy painting in their free time. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen being quite accomplished and Jane Seymour's flower paintings also seem of a high standard. Phil Tufnell, a larger than life character has a style of his own and when faced with challenges often returns to this. 

It has been a entertaining series so far, and many accomplished artists would struggle with the movement of the War Horse in the last programme. It will be interesting to see the final next week and whether another series is commissioned.

Home Is Where the Art Is.

Another BBC programme on at the moment is, the 3.45pm daily art programme, Home is Where the Art Is. There are 15 programmes altogether and this week was the start of the final 5 programmes.

"Each episode of Home Is Where The Art Is sees artists compete for the chance to create a piece of unique artwork for a mystery buyer’s home.
The artists visit the home of a potential buyer to glean inspiration before delivering a pitch of their idea.
The buyer then chooses two of the three artists to create their artwork before finally selecting which piece they would like to purchase.
In each show, three artists, whose skills could range from painting, metal work and embroidery to woodcarving and ceramics, will get to look around a mystery buyers’ home for inspiration before pitching their ideas and creating something unique for the buyers – but which one will they go for?
Rather than spending money on ‘off the shelf’ pieces from the high street, this series will show how easy it is to commission local artists."

This is of particular interest to me because I was originally interviewed as one of the artists. After this, I think they matched the artist to the commission required. From watching the programmes so far, I don't think I would have liked to gave been chosen. This may seem an unusual response but I'm not inspired by portraits of animals or some of the 'brief' - ideas people wanted. I offered Landscapes and Cityscapes but no one, so far, has wanted these.

There has been some really interesting requests, some for very personal reasons; others to fit in with the house or area. Looking around the buyer's house can help but can also confuse at times, when there is already a range of artwork.
I have been fascinated by the wide range of skills offered by the artists, and in all but one case, impressed with their artwork offered to the clients. It shows that there are many artists around that can offer superb individual artwork.
​From the two artists chosen to make the final pieces, one has always been purchased and on a couple of occasions both have been bought. I'm not sure what would happen if they liked neither. That might make an interesting final meeting though!
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,Nick Knowles is an excellent host and the programme flows well, I'm sure there is a lot more that happens behind the scenes, but it is an interesting concept.  I'm not sure if the early scheduled time  is to catch a different audience or  that the planners were not confident enough to put it on at peak times. 

On Facebook, I saw one post where the comments were quite derisory of the programme. This seems very unfair as it is the first time it has run and like everything could evolve over time. To me anything that advertises the quality of artwork available to the public is a good thing. Some of the clients had never considered an original artwork and were pleased with the end result.

Nick Knowles' summing up at the end of the programme encourages people to think about buying original art and that can only be a good thing!

I hope they do another series because programmes such as this can influence people to buy original artwork rather than the mass produced work found in every large retail outlet.