Dates for 2023 series of Landscape Artist of the Year announced

• the dates and locations – and 
• see a video of filming in progress at one location that I’m sure will have everybody who applied but didn’t get selected saying “I’m glad I didn’t have to do that one!”
• plus a REMINDER: the call for entries for Series 8 of Landscape Artist of the Year is still open and tomorrow I’ll publish a post about the Call for Entries!

You can watch the series – if you live in the UK – on Sky Arts, Sky Arts on Freeview (Freeview channel 11 and Freesat channel 147) and via the NOW app.

• In each heat, eight artists will choose their preferred medium to create a plein air painting in just four hours 
• 50 wildcard entrants – keen professional and amateur artists who have not made the official contestant list – compete at the same locations near to wherever the pods sit. The judges will assess their work nominating one best wild-card artist each week, one of whom will then go through to the semi-final.
• the judges, award winning portrait artist Tai Shan Schierenberg, curator Kathleen Soriano and art historian Kate Bryan, will assess their progress and choose who will advance to the semi-final.
• The Five Heat Winners and the selected Wild Card Winner compete in the Semi Finals for one of three places in the Finals.
• Three artists in the Finals compete for Landscape Artist of the Year 2023 – and a £10,000 Commission to paint a specific location (to be announced)

EXCEPT the number of heats is different. There are only five heats this
year ( like last year) where previously there were six. (Which is the same as happened to PAOTY – where they also reduced the number of heats by one)

So the dates
for the eight episodes – for your diary – are:

1. Heat 1: 11th January 2023
2. Heat 2: 18th January 2023
3. Heat 3: 25th January 2023
4. Heat 4: 1st February 2023
5. Heat 5: 8th February 2023
6. Semi Finals: 15th February 2023
7. The Final: 22nd February 2023
8. Commission: 1st March 2023

We have to wait and see which Heat was where until the series is broadcast.
However I do know that filming took place at:  

• Royal Ascot – which has a dress code see Joan Bakewell and Stephen Mangan above – dressed for action! It’s also possibly one of the most challenging locations the artists have ever been asked to paint.
• the gothic grounds of Castle Ward in Northern Ireland, a National Trust site and the iconic filming location for Winterfell in Sky Atlantic’s hit series Game of Thrones 
• Blackpool  (in June 2022): 
• one heat took place on the Blackpool Pleasure Beach on what looks very like a bleak breezy day on the Lancashire Coast – see the video below by Visit Fylde Coast (who rather amusingly thinks it’s “Watercolour Challenge” for most of the video) of presenters sat having a discussion; the painters in their pods and the wild cards 
• I’ve also seen a second photo of the pods down on the sands of Blackpool Beach. Weather doesn’t look much different.

The Semi- Finals were filmed at the Thames Barrier – which is a a retractable barrier system built to protect the floodplain of most of Greater London from exceptionally high tides and storm surges.

The Finals were held at the picturesque and whimsical Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales.

No pressure there then!

To be perfectly honest, I really cannot see how any of the locations will identify the artist who is likely to be best at delivering a commission of that nature – given both the Van der Veldes were marine painters.