Dates for 2023 series of Landscape Artist of the Year announced

• the dates and locations – and 
• see a video of filming in progress at one location that I’m sure will have everybody who applied but didn’t get selected saying “I’m glad I didn’t have to do that one!”
• plus a REMINDER: the call for entries for Series 8 of Landscape Artist of the Year is still open and tomorrow I’ll publish a post about the Call for Entries!

You can watch the series – if you live in the UK – on Sky Arts, Sky Arts on Freeview (Freeview channel 11 and Freesat channel 147) and via the NOW app.

• In each heat, eight artists will choose their preferred medium to create a plein air painting in just four hours 
• 50 wildcard entrants – keen professional and amateur artists who have not made the official contestant list – compete at the same locations near to wherever the pods sit. The judges will assess their work nominating one best wild-card artist each week, one of whom will then go through to the semi-final.
• the judges, award winning portrait artist Tai Shan Schierenberg, curator Kathleen Soriano and art historian Kate Bryan, will assess their progress and choose who will advance to the semi-final.
• The Five Heat Winners and the selected Wild Card Winner compete in the Semi Finals for one of three places in the Finals.
• Three artists in the Finals compete for Landscape Artist of the Year 2023 – and a £10,000 Commission to paint a specific location (to be announced)

So the dates
for the eight episodes – for your diary – are:

1. Heat 1: 11th January 2023
2. Heat 2: 18th January 2023
3. Heat 3: 25th January 2023
4. Heat 4: 1st February 2023
5. Heat 5: 8th February 2023
6. Semi Finals: 15th February 2023
7. The Final: 22nd February 2023
8. Commission: 1st March 2023

• Royal Ascot – which has a dress code see Joan Bakewell and Stephen Mangan above – dressed for action! It’s also possibly one of the most challenging locations the artists have ever been asked to paint.
• the gothic grounds of Castle Ward in Northern Ireland, a National Trust site and the iconic filming location for Winterfell in Sky Atlantic’s hit series Game of Thrones 
• Blackpool  (in June 2022): 
• one heat took place on the Blackpool Pleasure Beach on what looks very like a bleak breezy day on the Lancashire Coast – see the video below by Visit Fylde Coast (who rather amusingly thinks it’s “Watercolour Challenge” for most of the video) of presenters sat having a discussion; the painters in their pods and the wild cards 
• I’ve also seen a second photo of the pods down on the sands of Blackpool Beach. Weather doesn’t look much different.

No pressure there then!

To be perfectly honest, I really cannot see how any of the locations will identify the artist who is likely to be best at delivering a commission of that nature – given both the Van der Veldes were marine painters.