BP Portrait Award 2010

Don't Be Too Serious

by Elizabeth McDonald

Oil on canvas 635 x 432 x 50 mm

The prize winners for the BP Portrait Award 2010 were announced at the Awards Ceremony on the 22 June 2010. The BP Young Artist Award 2010 was awarded to current MFA student Elizabeth McDonald for Don't Be Too Serious.

Elizabeth McDonald painted her portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Camillo Paravicini, in his studio in her home city of Glasgow. While they worked in the same building, in neighbouring studios, the two artists hardly knew each other. She says while the clothing Camillo wears in the portrait - a black jacket and tie and black rimmed glasses - is similar to that which he would normally wear, his posture was staged to accentuate the tension between youth and maturity. ‘Through the sittings, and getting to know Camillo,' she says, ‘I not only found myself examining his personal style but looking closer at other aspects of his personality. Perhaps most intriguingly, I began to see simultaneously the boy in the young man and the older professional gentleman the young man could become.'