Portrait Artist of the Year

Tell us about producing Portrait (and Landscape) Artist of the Year over the past decade…

They are the most joyous shows I’ve been involved in. Artists tend to be really nice people, and we don’t show, as others do, the humiliation of a competitor packing their bags and leaving the programme, accompanied by sad music. There are scores of artists who [if not for the show]would still be amateur and are now professional – television often gets a bad rap, but we feel that to have achieved something like that is fantastic.

Over the past decade Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year has emerged as one of the channel’s flagship shows – and one in which skill triumphs over exhibitionism. As Sky Arts’ supremo, Phil Edgar-Jones, said: “The show is not all about loud, mad characters but people doing something well.”

He was speaking at an RTS London event, “Portrait Artist of the Year at 10”, where he was joined by members of the production team at independent producer Storyvault Films, and which was chaired by the company’s founder Stuart Prebble, also an executive producer on the show.