Was going to be on the telly but I pulled out...
Now then girls, I'm too busy at the moment to find time to paint - what with looking after your cousin Jack, keeping house and the volunteer work I'm doing. So I've been trying to keep my hand in painting by entering competitions. My good artist friend who goes to my Opening Nights with me suggested I enter a contest a few months ago. I didn't spend long looking at it and thought what the heck I'll just enter. So I did with my latest painting as you can see - and forgot about it. Until last week...
...I got a phone call. They said the judges has selected my work to go through to the next round. The "heats" round. That I should go to London in April to compete. That it would be going on the telly. What?!
The competition is the Sky Arts Portrait of the Year 2019 and I was left in a quandary. I would have been set up in a posh gallery in London to paint a celebrity. I would be given four hours to finish the painting, Now then, the canvas I entered with took me two years to paint. I take my time, swap and change colours, alter thickness and thinness of the paint and do that when I want to. I know full well that I wouldn't have been happy with what I did in four hours. Plus I'd have been on the telly and the presenters - Frank Skinner and Joan Bakewell - would be stopping me to ask me the whys and wherefores of what I was doing.
I panicked. I asked my artist friends. And my American friend Marti replied - Lucy, you do realise that that's a reality show, don't you? Do you want to appear on a reality show as an artist then? And that made my mind up. I'm not a fan of reality shows Evie and Rose - I'm afraid I don't like Big Brother. Even though it would have massively increased my trade as an artist, I phoned back and pulled out. As the girl who took the call said I should take a compliment from it. There were several thousand entrants and I was one of the seventy two they picked. So yes it feels like the right decision - I'm not someone who's comfortable behind a camera, that's for sure!
