(upbeat string music) - Hello and welcome to Paddy's Hole at the mouth of the River Tees, where industrial meets picturesque and produces this amazing, unique landscape.

- Yes, and it could be our most windy location ever.

- Yeah, it's a bit windy around Paddy's Hole.

- Yes.

It'll get windier.

- Anyway, welcome to Sky Arts' "Landscape Artist Of The Year".

- [Joan] In this series we challenged 48 artists to paint some of Britain's most stunning vistas.

And today, eight of these artists have been asked to recreate this postindustrial coastal location in their own unique style.

- [Frank] Half of today's artists are professional.

Alessia Avellino, Joakim Allgulander, Robert Davis, and Helen Hallows.

- A lot of my work is about my emotional response to the landscape.

So I've got processes I use and I'll use those, but it's all to play for.

- [Joan] And the remaining artists are amateurs.

Paul Davis, Kate Tustain, Benji Thomas, and Catherine Edmonds.

- I expect to pick up a pencil shortly and find my hand is shaking so much I can't draw a straight line.

But I'll worry about that when it happens.

- [Frank] And on hand to scrutinize their efforts are our three judges: award winning artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg, independent curator Kathleen Soriano, and art historian Kate Bryan.

- [Joan] They're all competing for a fabulous prize, a trip to the Caribbean and a £10,000 commission to paint the view from Firefly, the Jamaican home of Noel Coward.

- [Frank] And our eight selected artists aren't the only ones hoping to secure the prize.

50 other artists, our wildcards, are here to try their luck at winning a place in the semi-final.

- This is industrial landscape really, isn't it?

It's quite quite gloomy and... - I know, I hope to make it gloomier actually.

- Oh, really?

- Absolutely, yeah.

- [Joan] And our eight artists now take on the ultimate creative challenge.

- [Frank] And you write... - Novels and poetry and short stories.

- And get them published as well.

- Yeah.

- [Frank] And you paint?

- [Catherine] Yes.

- Wowee, it's like sitting with Leonardo.

You've even got the same hair.

(gentle melodic music) The weather in this area is volatile, and today, Paddy's Hole itself is at the mercy of the North Sea winds.

- [Joan] Something that our pods, though sturdy, were not built to withstand.

So for the first time ever, our artists have had to move inside.

- Being inside works for me.

I've got collage bits going on, so to be able to lay that out without the wind is...

I think that's gonna be a benefit for me.

- I bought a very large stone with me in the belief that there was gonna be quite a gusty wind out there, but obviously now that we've actually come indoors, that's a relief.

- As our artists settle in to the South Gare Marine Club, the judges have a chance to study their submissions one by one.

Esteemed judges, welcome to the Northeast of England.

I'm sorry that you're a little bit windswept, but it's gonna be fine.

- It's fabulous.

- You know what, it's not about us.

It's about this.

So we begin with...

I think this is beautiful.

What do you guys think?

- Yeah at first sight it does look very traditional.

Then you see the skill, you know, as you're talking about the sort of abstraction of the marks but also the softness as it goes to the back.

So you get this immense distance going through there.

- You've got the Hay Wain sort of carriage in the middle there.

Little farmer with his red dot.

Perfect.

I was thinking, first of all, is it sort of like Henri Rousseau or slightly surrealist, but now I'm beginning to wonder whether it isn't just taken off a phone filter that you can get that sort of does play around with the colors in that way.

- [Kate] It feels like it's quite contained.

It could be a movie set, couldn't it?

It's just got such a strong atmospheric quality to it, slightly apocalyptic.

It's sort of resisting being a beautiful landscape, and the water and the ink or the wash or whatever they've used, don't like sitting together.

So it just gives it such a strong feeling.

- I love this explosion of the tree.

You know, I'm not sure that they actually need a landscape in front of them to paint a landscape.

So we'll see whether they respond directly today.

- [Tai-Shan] I love the sort of traces of the drawing that's been rubbed out and reapplied.

Gives it great vitality.

- [Frank] Well, I'm gonna say I love it.

- Yeah.

The way in which it's all apportioned off, almost like someone working with fabric and laying it on.

And then these really incredibly fine dots and lines that sort of denote almost like drawing, but done with ink and pencil I think in dot form.

- [Kate] I think it's stitching.

They've obviously used a sewing machine to run down these lines, but it doesn't take anything away from the sort of overall painterly textural nature of it.

- [Tai-Shan] It's like a mind unraveling sort of landscape.

It's a doodle that's sort of become rather beautiful and interesting and intricate.

- It feels organic, but it's absolutely controlled.

The composition is very tight and very focused.

- Come into this one.

Ooh.

- [Kathleen] Beautiful drawing underneath.

Really beautiful.

And sort of sensitively done.

It's beautiful.

- That's very odd composition though.

You're thinking where is the viewpoint?

It seems sort of some grubby corner of the farm behind the hedge.

- But it feels all very honest, doesn't it?

And just wholesome.

- [Kathleen] And look how beautiful the water is there.

- [Kate] Yeah.

- No one ever tidies a farm, and that is the reference to that, at last, in art.

- [Joan] Normally this stretch of land is off limits to the public.

However, today the owners, PD Ports, have allowed our artists to paint this exposed Teeside setting.

- People think landscape art is all about the beautiful fields and the trees and the sunsets, you know, but actually sometimes it's really gritty and real.

And we really wanted our artists to have something they can get their teeth into.

Not all artists are suited to those really beautiful pastoral scenes.

- The location is fantastic.

It's wild, wet.

Yeah, all the Ws.

Wild, wet, wonderful.

(gentle music) - Artists, I hope you are all ready and primed, because your challenge is about to begin.

- Yes, you are four hours to paint this striking view, and your time starts now.

It's always essential to have a well thought out composition and today's view offers a wealth of choice from the boats to the industrial.

But the tricky bit is to decide what to focus on.

- I'm going for a view of just kind of the shoreline with a few of the boats scattered around and just this chaotic mess beside them.

So just zoomed in and got that section.

- So I'm gonna start off sketching the scene and then I'm gonna translate onto my board with stretch paper, work into that with some washes of ink and acrylic, and working on top of that with some mark making.

some texture, some collage, and finally some stitch.

- This is quite a big piece of paper.

Normally I work even bigger because I work with like...

I work standing up and I work with my own movement.

So normally my work is the size of me stretched out.

So that's why the size of it, I can't do it's really small.

- [Joan] Professional artist and yoga teacher Alessia tries to incorporate her passion for astrology into her work by including symbols, such as a planetary wheel.

She believes that the movement of each planet has a direct effect on the energy on the earth.

Alessia, can I interrupt you for a moment?

- [Alessia] Yes, please.

- You teach yoga and you're very much into your body movement.

So is this part of that?

Does how you move affect the picture?

- Yeah, it does.

So if I look at sort of this, like the curving of this sort of inland bit, you know, then I think of something like that.

I think of a gesture, sort of with it.

For me, I like this round composition this way, this other round composition that way, the fact that this is going up and that's going across, and then there's gonna be some movements in the clouds that are going maybe towards- - Look at you, look at you, you're like a dancer.

Like a dancer, dancing your picture into being.

- And one of our artists takes the physical to the extreme by using the actual landscape to create his artwork.

- Because my work is dependent on the environment I'm in and the history of the place, incorporating some of that history into the work is important.

So finding bits and pieces around the area that I'm working in is important for my work.

Look at that.

Doesn't that say sky to you?

Or does it say landscape?

- Robert Lee Davis works as a professional artist and is an art instructor for the American School in London.

He specializes in mixed media to create his signature collages.

And his submission, "Urban Dream", is made up of objects foraged from the local environment.

I remember doing a bit of collage at school, but it didn't look anything like yours.

When was the day when you thought, hey, this is me.

- It was when my mom sent me all of these little bits that she had... She was putting these packages together for the kids and she just threw everything in and sent it to me.

And when I looked at it, I was just like, oh my God, this is my history.

This is my story.

I knew what each of those little bits and pieces meant in my journey.

And so when I put together a work, it is a journey.

It talks about where I've walked, what I've done, what I've seen.

It talks about the places that I've visited and the people I've met.

(gentle music) - On the other side of the Gare, in full view of the wind turbines our 50 wildcard artists are showing good old fashioned British stoicism and are determined not to be beaten by the weather.

- Well, it's going better than I thought, to be honest.

I thought it was gonna get blown away.

My canvas is only blown over once.

- [Frank] Each of them has their own strategy to win a place in the semi-final.

- I've actually chosen to be a little bit apart from the crowd here, because I've got an absolutely huge fisherman's brolly and I didn't wanna be in front of anybody cause it would completely block everything off.

- [Joan] A wild card winner is picked from each of the heats, and once they're over, the judges will select one of them to join the other semi-finalists.

- Everybody's doing such different things.

I've never been in this situation before, painting with other artists, and it's really exciting.

Yeah, loving it.

- I think I'm just about starting to get a sense of space and a sense of depth here.

Now it's just a case of finding when to stop and what areas to bring forward, push back, that kind of thing.

- [Frank] Amateur artist Benji Thomas is an art student at Loughborough University.

His submission was inspired by a trip to Scotland during Storm Barbara.

It depicts a boat tethered on the Caledonian Canal and tries to capture the strange alien like form the covered boat had taken on.

- Now, tell me a bit about your process.

I understand you put ink on and then you take it off again.

- It's an interplay between the ink and the bleach.

So I'll usually starts off with a general mapping out with just the ink itself, and then I'll go in different dilution of bleach, different dilution of ink, and with each dilution it behaves differently.

So you get a massive amount of colors and hues and shades that you can get just from, you know, altering these two chemicals very slightly.

- It's a lot of chance involved.

- [Benji] Yeah.

- [Tai-Shan] So you're working with accidents as well.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- I mean, there's beautiful effect happening, which I presume just come about with you playing, putting on and taking away.

I have to step back quite a bit from the process and accept that I'm gonna have to respond to it in real time.

- Yeah.

But it's a very good composition and it's looking good.

- Thank you.

- Get on with it.

- I will.

(gentle melodic music) - My work is usually all about sort of building up layers of paint basically.

And I do a lot of detail.

So this is gonna be quite challenging within the time constraint.

So I'm gonna have to adapt.

- [Joan] Amateur artist Kate Tustain from Surrey completed an art foundation course, but after that is self-taught.

She's been painting landscapes for the last few years and has developed a unique approach to each work, in which she manipulates and enhances a digital image.

- And am I right in thinking that you use the filter on the phone?

- Yeah, I do.

- And is that sort of used in a way to sort of open up your imagination?

- Yeah, it is.

It helps me to then just have a focus rather than just trying to get something out of my head.

It helps me to kind of create the image that I want, that I can maybe see in my head and then use it just as a tool really, to translate into painting.

- [Frank] A place in the semifinal is guaranteed for one of today's eight heat artists, and they are nearly an hour into the competition.

- I'm feeling pretty good overall.

It could change at pretty much any moment, but I'm feeling good with the composition and I'm happy with how it's going, so yeah.

- Yeah, I am a little bit behind.

I thought I would be at the pasting stage now and then I can go back and add the details and then the paint after that.

But I'm still on that adding bit.

- Feeling more relaxed now than I did earlier actually.

Probably look calmer than I am on the inside.

- [Joan] Here at Paddy's Hole in Teeside, our eight artists have had an hour to settle in to the challenge, made more challenging because stormy weather has forced them to work indoors.

- There are windows and it is completely different painting through glass to painting when the glass isn't there, and it's quite subtle, the difference, but there really is one.

- Amateur artist Catherine Edmonds describes herself as a creative practitioner.

She trained as a musician and is also an author.

Her submission is of the farm where she grew up and is inspired by a photograph she took as a 10 year old with her very first camera.

I must say, I really like this.

I like the way you've attacked the sky so boldly.

- Yeah, well it suddenly got very windy.

So I thought, right, let's get some wind in there and like, I gave it a rainstorm, even though it hasn't rained, you know, because why not?

- [Frank] Yeah.

You are a musician, is that right?

- Professionally I'm trained as a musician and I'm also a writer, so I'm sort of Renaissance woman.

- [Frank] Okay, so you're classically trained.

- [Catherine] Yes.

- What do you play?

- Violin and viola.

- Okay, violin and viola.

And you write what, novels?

- I write novels and poetry and short stories.

- And get them published?

- Yeah.

- And you paint.

- Yes.

- Wowee.

It's like sitting with Leonardo.

Even got the same hair.

- [Joan] And while some artists have a very bold approach to their work, for others, the path is more tentative.

- You always worry because watercolor is an irreversible process.

You can go so wrong and you can't correct it.

So the only thing I'm worried about is I might put too many washes on or lose a certain atmosphere that I'm trying to pick up.

I'm looking for the golden moment.

- Amateur artist Paul Davis is a retired doctor from Suffolk.

For his submission, he focused on a rare elm tree, and keen to capture the spirit of the scene, he sketched and then painted it in watercolors in situ before returning to his studio to finish off the work in pastels.

Now this looks very meticulous, very detail concentrated.

Will it stay like that?

- No.

That's what happens.

I start off with incredible detail and I try and capture the actual picture itself, you know, what I'm actually seeing.

- [Joan] Something melancholy about it, isn't there?

- [Paul] There is actually.

- [Joan] Do you think you can express that in paint?

- I can in watercolor, very effectively.

I know what colors to use to do that.

But there again, I would like to put a bit of color into it because I don't want to create a melancholy kind of atmosphere.

I want to create a very colorful, lively, jolly kind of... - Jolly?

- Yeah.

- Is it going to be jolly?

- I want to put jollyness into it and gaiety, yes.

I want to make it look...

I want to make people smile.

- [Frank] Can I ask you a technical question?

- Mm.

- Because of adverse weather conditions, we've put our artists today in a little room.

Being removed from the environment, will they lose something?

- In essence, I think you're right.

I mean, as we stand here and we smell the landscape, we hear the larks and the winds blowing.

I feel much more part of the landscape.

- We're feeling the landscape.

I don't know if you feel it through glass.

- No, but I think as we saw on the wall, we've got lots of different artists and they will respond in, you know, their own way.

- It's an industrial/picturesque landscape, that's what we're thinking.

- With overtones of brine, as well, I would say.

It's very nautical.

I like the idea of these very sort of abstract bobbing boats in the bay.

And then you've got the headland of Paddy's Hole, and then in the distance you've got that strip of gas containers and cranes.

I think that's fantastic.

- The strip of land, it looked to me like two different pictures.

- You're right, it feels like two different spaces, but to combine it into a believable whole... Actually, yeah, I think it's gonna be very difficult.

- Yeah, so the problem is not Paddy's Hole, it's Paddy's whole.

- [Joan] As the day and their work progresses, some artists are having to adapt their methods to combat the challenging surroundings.

- It is a bit of surprise to be indoors, but you have to adjust it to the new environment and try to use it.

- [Frank] Swedish born professional artist Joakim Allgulander lives in London.

His submission entitled "Intruder" explores the relationship between man and nature and is intended to leave the viewer wondering which is the intruder, the tree or the modern block?

- How are you approaching color today?

I see that it's actually relatively representative of life.

- Yeah.

I'm actually searching now for the right pallete for this.

Now it's a bit difficult because the weather's changing.

- Yeah.

So will you play around with the composition here to heighten an effect?

I mean, you seem to maybe brought the land a bit closer and receded the background.

- Yeah.

I have pre taped using masking tape and you can't see it now.

This line is supposed to be the roof line here.

- Okay.

- And that line is like the window.

- Oh, so you'll let the viewer know that you painted it through a window.

So you'll actually have the window motif.

- Yeah, it will be in the whole thing.

- Okay, that's interesting.

That adds another dimension for us.

Okay, great.

Nice, good luck.

- Thank you.

- [Joan] One of today's artists is finding working in paint alone far too restricting.

- Part of my work is about capturing the patterns in the landscape that I see, and a way that I found to process that is to use what's the equivalent of lino cut, really.

I use erasers and I carve into them with a lino cut tool, and then I can create the patterns.

- [Joan] Professional artist Helen Hallows runs her own business designing and selling greeting cards.

For her submission, "Red Field", she chose collage to recreate an autumnal field she came across in Ashbourne, Derbyshire.

- You just set up your very nice sewing machine.

- Yeah.

- What's the plan?

- Okay, well I've finished the collage stage of my work and now I'm gonna stitch the pieces I've collaged into it, so it fuses the layers.

And then I'm also gonna use the stitch as a drawing line to add detail.

So to add in some of those swingy kind of ropes that we can see in the view behind there.

- Now, have you got in your mind's eye what color thread and what's happening?

- Yes.

I think mostly I'm gonna stick to same color, same tone.

And then as I've used some of these little pops of fluorescent color, I'm gonna use some fluorescent thread as well, just to go ping.

- [Frank] Our eight selected artists must overcome the challenges that working in a confined space entails.

Meanwhile, the task facing today's 50 wildcards is more uncertain, as they have to cope with frequent changes in the weather.

- Are you happy with the view?

Are you doing the industrial view or are you looking more out to sea?

What have you decided to do?

- [Man] Kind of half and half.

- Your faith is in the purple sky?

- Yeah.

- I've gotta put some color into it, haven't I?

- Well, I love old photographs, so hopefully this will look like an old photograph by the time we're done.

It's just a perfect spot.

I love it.

It's unique.

- [Joan] There are just two hours of the challenge remaining.

- I don't know if it's because the environment keeps changing or my head keeps spinning and changing or what I'm seeing, but that's why this clock is gonna go into it.

Cause time is a factor.

- I sort of sat and just looked at the area that was worrying me and I've put some things in it.

Obviously they're not exact representation of what it is.

They are there, but they're just not exactly in those places.

- Everything can go wrong from here on, everything can always go completely wrong, but it can also be very fantastic.

That's the whole thrill about painting.

(gentle music) - [Frank] Our artists are halfway through today's task to create a landscape of Paddy's Hole on Teeside.

- Challenged by the changeable weather conditions and working from the confines of a small room, the task is tough.

But are the judges in a mood to make allowances?

Well, here we are, halfway time.

What a setting.

And the weather's changing all the time, so you've got a problem of light.

- Yeah, light, and also Paddy's Hole, as this little harbor's called, now becomes Paddy's sump.

There's no water left in it.

So the boats are all sort of sitting on the bottom.

And so that's changed.

- So we really have set them a tough problem, haven't we?

How well are they all doing?

Should we start with Catherine?

- Yeah, Catherine's been very methodical in her approach.

So it's slowly building.

I'm surprised that she's managed to get quite so far in the time she's got.

- What we liked in her submission was that weird point of view.

It was sort of from a tangle, from behind a tangle, and it gave it sort of sort of intimacy and a sort of messiness.

And there's a lot of it here.

- [Joan] So Benji's, what'd you make of that?

- [Kathleen] I think I love the way that he stayed true to his own values.

He's reducing it to the simple forms.

I'm wanting more from him though in the finished product.

- And I think Kathleen's right.

I want it to kind of punch its way through and be a bit miserable or atmospheric.

- I don't know what these two are moaning about, I think his choices are good and I think his colors are beautiful and I really like it.

And now I'm worried that he doesn't mess it up.

- Right.

Joakim has going splashing color everywhere.

Is it good?

Is it well splashed?

You're a splasher a bit yourself.

- [Tai-Shan] It looks like he's a very good painter from life in a very loose, risky manner.

I'm trying to work out, is he gonna start scraping?

Is he gonna start blurring it?

How is he gonna bring that back around?

- Kate began with a huge spread of bright blue sky.

- I have to say that I'm not mad on this phone filter business, you know, taking the photograph and then using a filter and then being a slave to that filter.

It just removes you from reality.

- [Joan] What about Paul?

- I'm surprised about how long he's taking to get the scaffolding in place.

And just as we're walking through, he started putting down the first brush marks and suddenly I was seeing the lyrical touch, actually, the way he puts a paint on.

And suddenly, I think he'll find a lyricism in this brutal landscape.

- [Joan] Robert.

- Essentially, he's an artist who's found a trope, a style, and he follows it through consistently.

And you have to question whether the style is good enough to conquer everything or whether it's just a style for style's sake.

- [Joan] And Alessia's the largest canvas on the easels.

- She's got to the heart of what this place is.

Like, she's really, really seen it, understood it and then captured it.

So I don't think we need anything else.

- [Frank] Constructed from thousands of tons of slag waste from the nearby blast furnaces, Paddy's Hole was built as a recreational fishing ground for local iron and steel workers.

The harbor sits in the shadow of the now defunct Redcar blast furnace.

- The people of Teeside are made from iron and steel.

We all have it in our blood.

We're born with it in our blood.

And to be part of that industry was a great honor.

It was a great privilege.

And anybody that worked in iron and steel making over the last 150 years has been proud to call themselves an iron maker or a steel maker.

- [Frank] Teeside's iron and steel industry began with the discovery of iron stone in the nearby Eton Hills in 1850.

What followed was referred to as the great iron rush and workers came from all over Britain and Ireland to labor in the mines and iron works which sprung up nearby.

- In the space of 15 years, the landscape of this part of Teeside changed dramatically from what was really farmland and marshland to an industrial, smoggy, rainy landscape.

You would've seen blast furnaces.

You would've seen foundries, steel mills, rolling mills, all along the side of the river.

- [Frank] The industrial revolution fueled a huge demand for iron and steel.

New bridges and railways were required to transport goods and people across the British empire.

The region's crowning moment came in the 1920s when Teeside steel was used to build the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

- We're all also proud of the fact that Teeside steel left here and went right around the world to help build the great cities, the great structures, the Tyne Bridge, Sydney Harbor Bridge, major projects in Europe and India and Asia, all built from the steel that we produced here on Teeside.

- [Joan] Our wildcard artists are still braving the British weather.

And one of their paintings is also under attack from the local wildlife.

- You have got a lot of flying creatures on your painting.

Yeah.

I dunno, maybe they want to fly into my sky.

Shall we say that?

- [Frank] It started out as a beautiful landscape, it looks like a depiction of the battle of Britain.

- It does, doesn't it?

- Because from a distance they could be spitfires and Messerschmitts.

- [Woman] They look amazing.

- I think you're gonna have to be careful you don't get hypnotized, because just standing here looking at them, they're really mesmerizing.

You could kind of go into a trance looking at them.

- Well if you see me asleep, that's what will have happened.

- I'll come and give you a kick.

- Nice crowd.

- It is, and it's a really good location for them.

I really like what they're doing.

- Actually I think there's a lot of them who are just running around, chatting to people.

They prefer chatting to actually painting.

- [Kate] They seem quite a nosy wildcard bunch.

They wanna know what each other are doing.

- [Tai-Shan] There's a woman in the middle who's done on very rigid watercolor paper, some very colorful splashy paintings.

The first one of which is horizontal and is a very good description of what we've got in front of us.

- I like the two women at the front here, have you seen them, sitting next to each other?

One's got the beanie hat on.

And I love the way that she's reduced this landscape down, made it quite industrial, quite geometric.

She's got strange colors in it.

But when actually you look at the landscape, they are present.

Have you seen the guy down at the farm with the sepia?

- It is beautiful, isn't it?

But I was saying, he's rather beautiful as well.

He's got a nice beard, got beautiful hair and he does these super drawings.

He hasn't gone easily just sitting in the grass.

It's just all very romantic and very good.

- I think you sound a bit jealous.

- All right then, who else have you got in mind?

- [Frank] And after more deliberation, it's time to track down the winning wild card.

- So Robert, you've made us come to you all the way down here to tell you that today you are our wildcard winner.

(applause) Well done.

You owe me for that walk.

And all of these people for that walk.

- [Joan] Robert Innis from Crewkerne will take his place in a pool of winning wildcard artists.

And when the heats are over, one of them will be selected to take part in the semi-final.

(applause) - [Frank] There are just 30 minutes to go and our eight artists need to use the remaining time wisely to bring their artwork to life.

- Now, what I'm doing is what I call tickling the painting.

How are you responding to being tickled, painting?

- If I get really angry with my painting, then it turns very dark, very stormy, which can be effective, but it can absolutely ruin it.

So I have to be a bit careful.

- I am not incredibly calm and relaxed.

Like, that's a front.

I'm trying to keep a sort of slightly level headspace, cause otherwise I'll just panic and make a mess and spill something.

I'm pretty caged up at the moment, so... - Here on this post industrial inlet of Paddy's Harbor, sheltering from the volatile weather, our eight artists are nearing the end of their four hour challenge.

Artists, you have just five minutes left to the end of your challenge.

Five minutes.

- I've always kind of been that way, panic underneath.

What can you do about it?

You've done the best that you can.

And so you just kind of move on with it.

- [Kate] There's so much left that I could do with this painting.

I'm not really sure which bits to focus on, so I'm just gonna keep going and get through to the end.

- I'm fairly happy with it.

Not ecstatic, but I think given the pressures of the day, it's probably as good as I could have done.

- Artists, there is one minute to go.

- Artists, your time is up.

- Please put down your equipment and step away from your work.

(applause) Our three judges will be drawing on all their expertise to pick today's winner.

But first, in the relative calm of a sheltered spot, the general public have the chance to appreciate the artwork.

- It reflects the day today, it started off really gray, foreboding.

- Looks like it's got bleach, I think, or something like that, rather bleached.

Lovely colors.

- Yep.

And the limited pallet.

- Works.

- Love the sky.

And I like the way the industry and the boats, which are... Are they fishing boats though?

- [Man] Yeah.

Looks nice.

Very understated just cause the boat's there.

It's nice.

And as I say, the sort of wiry nature of the sky.

Gives a really interesting texture in there.

- I like the different textures down here and the stitching.

- Yeah, that's really good.

Yeah.

Part of it is quite literal and then part of it is quite naive and then there's the stitching as well.

Yeah.

- I love this one.

I love the sky effect.

I think it's really captures the day because it's nice and sunny now, but the weather was pretty cloudy early on, wasn't it?

- [Joan] Now the artists brushes have been put aside, it's time for the judges to decide on the winner.

And they start by a process of elimination to narrow them down.

- So nice, powerful drawing from Alessia.

I thought that she got that sort of grubby bit of Paddy's Hole on the left where you felt it was lots of mess and working and it was kind of confusing.

And I think she's got that confusion.

- It's got a sort of Margate, sweet seaside town feel to it.

I think he shied away from the industry and from the ghosts of the steel works there.

They're really nondescript.

I think actually one of the problems I have is this use of this block, bold color, which tips it very much into sort of seaside holiday art to me.

I'm really pleased with this.

I'm very pleasantly more impressed than I thought I would be.

I think it's very interesting.

- There is something where I feel the aesthetics override the journey of trying to find what he's got to say about the landscape.

- Whilst I, you know, the finished work doesn't necessarily please me because the color's not sophisticated enough, certainly in the sky, there are elements of it that feel new and fresh.

- His submission is very sophisticated and I find this very clumsy, but there's something about this boatyard in the front that absolutely gets across the grubby chaos that was there.

So in an interesting way, he's found a good equivalent.

- He managed to pull this around in the afternoon to have a bit more of that brooding sort of darker nature that was there in the submission.

It doesn't go all the way into sort of the noir that I wanted.

- My favorite bit is this down here, which I'd love to think was abstract, but actually in reality, it's the roof that she was looking out onto, I think.

But that I just think is inspired.

I love that.

- That there was a much better blend between the two mediums in the submission that you didn't really notice where one began on the other ended.

I mean, this is definitely about today, isn't it?

It's got the sense of the wind.

It's got the sense of a place which is a bit grubby and a bit gritty.

- Can I say the editing and the composition is very good.

The way the tires bring you in, the sort of echoing of the boat.

It does lead the eye through this sort of bunch of buildings and out to the horizon.

So it's very well constructed.

Catherine's worked it out very well here.

Really leads your eye round.

There is that separation, but it's also all one landscape.

And the light.

Somehow there's a very beautiful light in there, although I don't know how she's done it.

- The sky's great.

- The sky's amazing.

And the light was doing that today.

I watched it do that a few times.

- But I mean of these eight contestants, I think she really got the view today and that strange combination of two different sort of landscapes put together.

- [Frank] But there's only room for three on the shortlist.

- This looks better from a distance.

And so does this.

- That, that bit there, and as you said, the skyline, it works.

- No, that's beautiful.

I think I can pick out three.

- Artists, thank you for joining us at this exhilarating windy day on Teeside.

It's been great.

And it's also been great to watch you doing your terrific work.

- It certainly has, but the time has come when the judges have decided which three artists will be on the short list.

And those three artists are... Firstly, Catherine Edmonds.

(applause) - The second artist is Benji Thomas.

(applause) - And the third and final artist on the short list is Joakim Allgulander.

(applause) - Commiserations with those who didn't make it.

But thank you very much for taking part.

(applause) - I'm just really pleased I took part in it.

I think it was a wonderful experience.

Artists are wonderful people, and it's very easy to talk to them, very easy to socialize with them.

And they're full of positive vibes.

- [Joan] Before deciding who will win the place in the semi-final, the judges are keen to look at the work the three shortlisted artists have done today alongside their submissions.

- Let's talk about the three then.

Let's start with Catherine.

I've gotta say, I was surprised that you picked Catherine in the top three.

Partly because I really like it.

- I think Catherine has balanced those two landscapes beautifully in using that harbor arm to come and join them together, but more so each boat has a very sort of individual feel and then there's this faceless industry in the back.

- And I love that sort of texture she's given it with the ink and it's, you know, that's where the storytelling lies, in that enormous malevolent hovering sky.

- The way that the sort of industrial motifs look like they're made of rust is also very clever.

- What about Benji's work today?

- I think he's done something very atmospheric.

It's not just the lack of color.

I think it's his compositional choices and the way that he puts the marks down in opposition to one another.

- And he's done it really carefully.

And to have framed that little bit of the landscape and to focus on that, I think is really clever.

- I like the idea of taking what we saw of that harbor and reducing it down just as that working bit or a couple of boats and some old tires.

I thought it gave the sense of the place.

- So Joakim.

- He's not describing what he saw.

He's kind of recreated the mess of the boats and the sludge that he saw below him.

So it's a very weird sort of representation of what he saw.

And there's a great clumsiness in the painting of today.

Having said that, there's also strange charm in its madness.

- You know, Joakim did a great submission, which we all love.

And I think, you know, the work today is a powerful piece.

It's different, but it's powerful in a different way.

- Catherine, Benji, Joakim.

This is the moment none of us totally enjoy because only one of you can go through, and the judges have made their decision.

- Yes.

And the winning artist is... Benji Thomas.

(applause) - Well done, well done.

- Thank you.

(applause continues) I have no idea what just happened.

I won.

I'm into the semifinals, and I've got no idea how it happened.

I think I definitely am excited about the semifinal.

I think it's gonna be fantastic to actually be outside in the landscape and feeling it and being inside a pod and having the whole process there and doing all this again, yeah.

(applause) - What we love about Benji is his experimentation and courageousness with the material he's using.

You know, he's very experimental, makes beautiful marks.

In his submission there was subtlety in the marks.

Today, he was under time constraints and so he reigned in a bit, but we want to see that experimentation, interesting mark making and inventiveness going forward.

(melodic music)