LONDON.- The Worshipful Company of Painter Stainers and the Lynn Foundation awarded the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2016 to Henry Kondracki for his atmospheric oil painting The Cowgate. Now in its eleventh year, the Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for artists in the UK, and is unique in its focus on draughtsmanship and representational painting. Kondracki receives the £15,000 top prize in addition to an engraved gold medal.

Kondracki, who lives and works in Edinburgh, comments: “A well worn part of Edinburgh, the Cowgate’s history goes back a long way … My memory is part of the story of the city, but only a small part. I am aware of all the people who have walked these same snowy streets, leaving tracks that record their journeys, rather like drawing – a moment in time frozen.”

“Henry Kondracki's The Cowgate was an instant choice for the Prize. The painting is full of atmosphere and feeling. Kondracki is a very respected painter and he has been in the final selection several times, although he has never actually won the Prize.” Ken Howard OBE RA NEAC, artist, 2016 selector.

The Young Artist Award of £2,500 is awarded to Bernadett Timko for her oil painting Studio 7. Timko is currently studying portrait painting at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art, London, and is a scholar of the New English Drawing School. “Moments which are filled with emotions compel me to paint. My intention is to keep those moments alive on the canvas.”

London artist Charlie Schaffer has won the £5,000 Brian Botting Prize, for his sensitive representation of the human figure in his painting Madonna. “By spending prolonged periods of time with the sitter, a unique relationship forms that can only exist within the context of sitting for a painting,” Charlie explains. “The finished painting itself ends up being a record of this experience, an almost inevitable by-product of the situation.”

Five Runner-up prizes of £1,500 each were awarded to: Benjamin Andreas, for Hoxton Square Daytime; Peter Clossick for Garden; Joe Fan for Fontainebleau Reconstruction; Ian Rowlands for The Pond; Neale Worley for Model.

The exhibition features 139 works by some of the very best UK painters, and was selected this year by five highly regarded art world figures: Catharine Davison, Artist; Ken Howard OBE RA NEAC, Artist; James Lloyd, Artist; Sam Wadsworth, Artist; Andrew Wilton, Visiting Research Fellow at Tate Britain. The exhibition is on at the Mall Galleries, London, from 7 – 13 March 2016.