Artist Gareth Reid was tonight crowned as the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2017, winning a career-changing £10,000 commission to paint TV presenter and comedian Graham Norton, which will hang in The National Gallery of Ireland.
As well as winning the competition, Gareth was surprised to discover he is a distant relative of Graham, as Gareth's great grandmother and Graham's great grandfather were siblings. The happy coincidence was only revealed when Gareth met Graham for the first time to begin painting his portrait, and their conversation revealed they both had family from the Northern Ireland town of Ballymena.
Gareth beat 54 artists from the UK and abroad to win the hit show, which is presented by TV personality and comedian Frank Skinner alongside presenter and journalist Joan Bakewell, a leading figure in the arts for nearly six decades.
Gareth, one of hundreds to originally enter the competition with a self-portrait, won his heat in week six of the show with his portrait of TV presenter Adrian Chiles, before again impressing the judges - artist Tai Shan Schierenberg, independent curator Kathleen Soriano and art historian Kate Bryan - in the semi-final with his portrayal of award-winning actress Imelda Staunton.
In the final, Gareth, who is originally from Belfast in Northern Ireland but now living and working as an artist in Glasgow, demonstrated his skills with two pieces: a detailed portrait of actor Tom Courtenay completed in charcoal, watercolour, pencil and pastels and a commissioned portrait of The Hon. Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, a judge of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, and the first Asian woman to serve as a High Court judge in the UK. Gareth's opponents in the final were Kimberly Klauss, an American artist living and working in London, and Liam Dickinson, a Lancashire painter.
Speaking about his newfound cousin, Gareth says: My dad knew there was some connection a while back but only decided to tell me about a week after the final when we were in Kerry together. It was vague at that point - some cousins of his thought there was a connection through my granny's side. I still can't quite take in the chances of me, out of all the people who entered, getting the opportunity to paint Graham, out of all the people they could have chosen, and it turning out we're third cousins. As Graham aptly put it, I'm embarrassed for Ireland . He is genuinely a lovely guy and he took [my partner] Suzy and me out for dinner after the unveiling.
And on winning, Gareth says: It's great to receive the affirmation of the award, but I know that on another day it could have easily been someone else so I feel, as ever, very lucky. There was so much serendipity involved - for a start having Adrian as a sitter, who was perfect for what I wanted to do, then getting Bobbie Cheema-Grubb as the final commission was a total gift. I couldn't have asked for a better match."
The most important thing for me was the privilege of having a painting in a national public collection, but the thing you just can't buy is the exposure on this scale. For years you do the work and it's a very slow and often frustrating process getting it out there. But a big prize, especially a televised one, will definitely help the cause. We'll wait and see how it goes.
Portrait Artist of the Year was produced by London and Glasgow-based independent production company Storyvault Films, which also produces Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year. This series featured 20 celebrity sitters across six heats. Each was able to choose their preferred finished portrait to take home - regardless of whether that artist went through to the next stage.
All six heats and the semi-final were filmed in the courtyard of the Wallace Collection in London's Manchester Square, home to one of Europe's finest art collections. The show's grand finale took place at the National Portrait Gallery.
You can still watch this series of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year on Sky's on demand catch-up service. The new series of Portrait Artist of the Year begins filming next month at the Wallace Collection, London.
For more details about Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, information about artists taking part and stills from the series, contact:
Kerry Milliken at EyePR (Kerry@eyepr.co.uk) 07799 714006
Jemma Wisdom (Jemma@eyepr.co.uk) 07400 849988
Lisa Moore (lisa@eyepr.co.uk) 07540 142354
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Artist Gareth Reid was tonight crowned as the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2017, winning a career-changing £10,000 commission to paint TV presenter and comedian Graham Norton, which will hang in The National Gallery of Ireland.
