LONDON.- The Worshipful Company of Painter Stainers and the Lynn Foundation announced, Wladyslaw Mirecki, as winner of the 2015 Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, for his beautifully detailed watercolour entitled Viaduct and tank traps – pictured above. Mirecki receives the £15,000 top prize in addition to an engraved gold medal.

Mirecki comments: “Viaduct and Tank Traps is a view I’ve passed at least twice daily for the last 29 years on my way to the shop, pub or railway station. People often ask why I paint so many winter scenes. This view is utterly obliterated by foliage in the summer despite the Viaduct being just yards away. I’m also asked why I paint the Viaduct so often. I can see it from my home. If I lived by the sea, I wouldn’t be asked why I paint that so often. But really the painting is as much to do about the elder tree and the metal fence as anything else. The tank traps, a remnant from the last war, are a prop for brambles, another subject with which I am fixated.”

“Wladyslaw Mirecki is a master of watercolour who derives much of the vitality of his imagery from a sure and subtle juxtaposition of man-made architecture and natural growth. Here the Chappel Viaduct is brilliantly foregrounded by rusting railings, a gnarled tree, saplings and a tank trap being reclaimed by nature. This is a major work by an artist at the height of his powers.” Andrew Lambirth, Art critic and 2015 selector.

The Young Artist Award of £2,500 was awarded to student, Louis Appleby, for his work, Planet of the Apps. He comments, “The rooms that we live in reflect the world that we live in”.

Five Runner-up prizes of £1,500 each were awarded to; Peter Archer for Grounded; Jeanette Barnes for Canary Wharf Cross Rail Station nearing completion; Daisy Cook for Between The Witherings; Patrick Cullen for Death in Varanasi, burning ghats at Dusk; and Danny Markey for Tom in Summer field. This year sees the introduction of the Brian Botting Prize of £5,000, which has been awarded to Ema Pina for her outstanding representation of the human figure in her painting entitled Bóbó.

Now in its tenth year, the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize is an open competition, which encourages the very best creative representational painting and promotes the skill of draughtsmanship. Created in 2005 by The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers and The Lynn Foundation, the competition is one of the most prestigious awards for artists in the UK, offering generous total prize money of £30,000.

The exhibition, on display at the Mall Galleries, London, from 16 to 21 February 2015, features the very best in British figurative painting, showcasing work of both established and young contemporary artists selected for exhibition by a panel of five highly regarded art world figures: Angela Flowers, Founder, Flowers Gallery; Ken Howard OBE RA NEAC, artist; Andrew Lambirth, Art Critic; Ruth Stage, artist; and Andrew Wilton, Visiting Research Fellow at Tate Britain.