Though painters are perpetual long shots for Britain’s top art award, the Turner Prize, the John Moores Painting Prize is considered the U.K.’s most coveted for painters, and this year’s winner, Sarah Pickstone, has joined a treasured set of the country’s most celebrated (and mostly male) artists, including David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, and Peter Doig. Pickstone’s winning canvas, “Stevie Smith and the Willow,” received the top prize at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery as part of the Liverpool Biennial, BBC reports.
In doing so, she became the first woman to win the £25,000 ($40,600) prize since 1989, when it went to Lisa Milroy — Pickstone was nominated once before, in 2004.
Pickstone explained that her painting was based on an illustration created by Stevie Smith to accompany her haunting poem “Not Waving But Drowning” (1957).
“It’s a very dark poem,” Pickstone admitted. “The poem was one of many sources for the painting, I’ve always been intrigued by Stevie Smith and how she worked, and I had a sense of wanting to make something more joyous out of the poem.”
— Benjamin Sutton
