Professional artist Susan Isaac from Upton reaches final of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2025

An artist from Upton will battle it out for the chance to win a £10,000 prize on television tonight.

Susan Isaac, a professional artist, has made it to the final of Sky Arts’ Landscape Artist of the Year, airing tonight (Wednesday, March 12) at 8pm. She will compete against Kieran Guckian, a web designer turned full-time artist from Dublin and Ben Macgregor, from Surrey, who runs a bespoke furniture company, when all three will be challenged to paint Stonehenge.

The winner will receive a £10,000 commission from The Coutauld Gallery in London to produce a painting of the south of France, an area that has impressed painters like Monet and Van Gogh. Immediately after the final, a second programme will air at 9pm, following the winner’s journey and revealing their final piece of artwork in pride of place in the gallery which is home to a range of impressionist pieces.

Susan, who currently has an exhibition running at Gallery 6 in Newark, faced stiff competition from six other semi-finalists, five the winners of previous heats and one a wildcard winner.

“I’m absolutely astonished to be a finalist and I wasn’t expecting to hear my name called out then,” Susan said during the programme.

“It’s been a massive confidence boost. I hadn’t dared to think I would get this far so it’s absolutely delightful.”

During the semi-final her painting of HMS Warrior in Portsmouth’s historic dockyard impressed the judges - award-winning artist Tai Shan Schierenberg, independent curator Kathleen Soriano and art historian Kate Bryan.

“Today’s view looks really quite complicated and quite draughtsmanly,” Susan told camera crews during the semi-final. “There’s a lot of rigging there to contemplate.”

Susan, who also competed on the show in 2022, chose to paint a base layer of orange, which she said was to “counter-balance a lot of blues”. Judge Tai said it created a “brooding atmosphere” but later Kathleen told Susan “it was weird”. “Both of those colours [orange and blue] are up there but not necessarily in the right order,” Susan replied.

She also chose an angle which meant she put the easel on the concrete floor and stayed on her knees for the four-hour challenge.

“I don’t even really understand how Susan does what she does,” judge Kate said, after Susan’s named was called as one of the three finalists. “It’s amazing the forcefulness and the fierceness and the really strong bravado expressionistic qualities.”

“Each of our artists are bringing something that are slightly off, slightly different and we have to remember that’s what the impressionists did,” Kathleen said.

“It will be a tough decision who’s going to the south of France, each of them bring strength,” Tai said.

Susan reached the semi-finals with a painting at King’s Cross station in London, in which she waited until the closing minutes of the time limit before adding the sky. The judges praised her for “capturing the history and atmosphere” of the location.

Susan’s exhibition at Gallery 6 runs until March 22.