We are delighted to announce Moyna Flannigan, Olivia Irvine and Derrick Guild RSA as the recipients of three awards funded by the RSA Blackadder Houston Bequest.
The £20,000 RSA Blackadder Houston Mid-Career Painting Award, which has been awarded to Moyna Flannigan, intends to enable a committed painter to devote themselves exclusively to painting for a period up to 26 weeks. Edinburgh-based artist Moyna Flannigan’s practice centres on the representation of women in painting. Her works are an amalgamation of memory, experience and imagination, drawn from history, mythology and popular culture.
Moyna Flannigan
She intends to use the funds to embark on a period of research in central Italy of the spatial geometry, earthly colour and light of the panel paintings and frescoes of the quattrocento painters: Piero della Francesca, Tommaso Masaccio, Luca Signorelli and Andrea Mantegna.
Flannigan said: ‘I’m really delighted to receive this painting award from the RSA, and especially pleased that it comes from the legacy of Elizabeth Blackadder and John Houston who were such generous teachers when I was a student at Edinburgh College of Art. Now that I teach there myself, and I am at a different stage in my painting life, I am conscious, as perhaps they were, that painting helps me to teach, and teaching helps me to paint.’
Olivia Irvine
Olivia Irvine, the recipient of the RSA Blackadder Houston Mid-Career Travel Award will receive £5,000 to carry out the research, development and production of a new body of work through a period of international travel.
Irvine uses a combination of the imagined and the observed to create her paintings, altering and intensifying memories to achieve a dreamlike and theatrical quality. She plans to use the award funds to visit South America, researching how literature has influenced the theatricality and dream-like sensibilities of contemporary South American painting.
Olivia Irvine said: ‘I am delighted to have won this award. I remember both Elizabeth and John from my student days at Edinburgh College of Art, and they always had something interesting to say about painting and travel.’
Derrick Guild RSA, photo Sylvie Guild
The £5,000 RSA Academician Blackadder Houston Mid-Career Travel Award, which has been awarded to Derrick Guild RSA, enables a Royal Scottish Academician that is a committed fine art painter to carry out the research, development and production of a new body of work through a period of international travel.
Guild’s work references the European still life paintings of the 15th-19th centuries, and he’ll use the award funds to visit the Netherlands, viewing the ongoing public accessed restoration of Paulus Potter's 1647 painting, The Young Bull.
‘To be able to view some of the restoration at first hand is such an exciting prospect for me. Learning about Potter’s technique, pigments, surface and mediums will greatly influence the development of the artworks I will make in response to Potter’s wonderful work. Thank you to the RSA for supporting my proposal.’
We are honoured to enable these significant awards for contemporary painters on behalf of Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RSA and her husband John Houston RSA and we look forward to seeing the results.
