Portrait Artist of the Year is a competition format that airs on Sky Arts. In each episode, our host Stephen Mangan welcomes 9 aspiring artists from across the UK and Ireland to compete to win the title of Portrait Artist of the Year by painting an array of celebrity sitters from the worlds of stage, screen, sport, literature, and politics. The artists battle it out under a strict 4-hour time limit and under the watchful eyes of expert judges Tai Shan Schierenberg, Kathleen Soriano and Kate Bryan across eight heats. Each heat winner goes on to paint another icon in the semi-final with three artist being selected to go through to the final. For each series the winner receives a £10,000 commission for a word renowned institution (Sir Tom Jones in the National Gallery of Wales, Alan Cumming in the National Gallery of Scotland, Nile Rodgers in the Royal Albert Hall, Graham Norton in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and Sir Lenny Henry in the National Portrait Gallery).

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The Portrait Artist of the Year format is produced in several countries including, most recently, Norway, and the taped show is available via our distributors. In the UK, PAOTY continues to break all audience records on the Sky Arts channel, with the repeats continuing to perform well above the channel average.

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For more information about Portrait Artist of the Year, visit Sky Arts Artist of the Year.

Works of art produced by many of our artists are for sale via Artist of the Year: Gallery.