Capturing someone’s personality on the canvas is a unique skill. Try doing it in four hours, on the telly with a live audience. Fiona Adams meets Christabel Blackburn, the Sheen-based winner of the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year...
The prizewinning commission for this year’s champion in the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year competition was to paint American music legend Nile Rodgers for display in the Royal Albert Hall. Part-way through the programme documenting the process, a chatty and relaxed Rodgers, clearly identifying a kindred spirit, teases winner Christabel Blackburn with the words “Who are you? Are you my sister?!”.
The 67-year-old writer, music producer and co-founder of Chic is sitting for Christabel on the balcony of Abbey Road Studios in London, where he is Chief Creative Advisor. Oozing, well, chic, Rodgers is wearing his signature hat and glasses and decked out in some pretty fancy trousers. He looks as cool as a cucumber. As does artist Christabel, which it turns out is a million miles from the truth.
“It’s funny because so many people have said to me how cool and collected I came across on camera,” she laughs down the phone. “Which is completely the opposite to how I felt the entire time… so I must have some sort of magic face that doesn’t show nerves!”
However, Christabel did feel a real connection with Nile and enjoyed painting his portrait most out of all of the celebrities she encountered through the 2020 competition.
“He is such an interesting person and has lived such an exciting life. I had so much fun going to his house and seeing his walk-in wardrobe, helping him decide what to wear… not many people get to do that!
“There’s also a lot to paint in terms of character and aesthetics. He’s got the hat, the dreadlocks, the clothes, the weathered face. There were similarities between us in that he is quite a shy person. He doesn’t like performing all that much, he doesn’t like to talk, to show off. He much prefers to let his voice come through his music and I feel the same way about art. My family is either intellectual or creative, they all like to talk and I was always the quiet one – I found my voice through painting.”
Christabel, who now lives in Sheen with husband Charlie and children Milo, four and Mary, five months, grew up in Chelsea, surrounded by music and creativity. Her mother, Perri Ashby, is a fashion designer and her father, Bill Blackburn, a pianist. With an older half-brother and sister, who had already left home, she enjoyed a contented childhood where art was her go-to activity.
“Mum used to always give me art classes. If I had friends over we would have a still life or something set up that we had to paint. I was taken to exhibitions from a young age and my dad introduced me to the likes of Edward Hopper and David Hockney. So those influences were always there.”
However, Christabel did not initially believe that she would become an artist, instead of following in filial footsteps at university.
“I think my mother put me off being an artist because she did something creative and she knew how hard it was. I studied Classics, as my brother and my dad had done. It was a bit of a tradition in my family – ‘you must go to university, you must get a degree, Classics is a good one’ – and I went ‘OK, I’ll do that’ but I was really jealous of everyone in the art block, coming out in their overalls and I knew I needed to be there.
“At school, I loved life drawing, I was always obsessed with drawing the figure. After university I found a school in Florence where all I did for a year was study the figure, making plaster casts, just using charcoal, it was very academic. I knew that I didn’t want to paint in the style of the Old Masters so after that, I spent another two years at the London Atelier of Representational Art, which was again all figurative but this time I did painting and sculpture.”
Gradually Christabel’s style emerged and with commissions under her belt, she was able to start having exhibitions and apply for competitions.
“You can learn a lot from them. It is a way of validating yourself as an artist and it’s an experience you really wouldn’t want to miss. You meet amazing people and it broadens you as an artist and a person.”
She first took part in the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year competition in 2018 but didn’t get past the first round.
“The first time I think I was trying to paint something that would stand out, that I thought the judges might like as opposed to what I would paint naturally. A few years on I was more confident in myself. Even so, I was pretty terrified going into it. It has been a process, but each time your confidence is reinforced and I stuck true to the way I paint and that was the biggest lesson I learnt.”
As any viewer of the programme will know, the artists must produce the most amazing work in just four hours, all while they are under the scrutiny of the cameras, the judges and the audience. Usually, an artist would get to know their sitter and explore their personality, but in this creative cauldron, they must work under the most extraordinary pressure. Christabel impressed the judges with her consistent, bold style throughout, producing powerful portraits of Adrian Dunbar, Elaine Paige, Willard Wigan and for the final, writer Lemn Sissay, who spent much of his time reciting lines of poetry.
“It’s a very unusual environment, quite intense and crazy, not at all a natural habitat for an artist like me who is usually private and likes to paint by themselves. So you have to go into this zone of concentration that makes you work very fast and productively.
“The process of being on camera and doing the show does get easier and becomes more fun as it goes along, but the painting gets harder because the stakes are higher and your nerves can get in the way of the painting.”
Christabel managed to hold her nerves in check and since the final life has been a bit of a whirlwind. She gave birth to her daughter Mary, saw her painting of Nile Rodgers unveiled and then, locked down at home with husband Charlie, found herself in high demand.
“It’s hard to say whether the impact from the competition would have been different if Coronavirus hadn’t happened, but I definitely think people have been paying more attention to the arts. I’ve had so many nice comments, people wanting to commission stuff, not just portraits, and I’ve been busier than ever. I can’t really keep up with demand at the moment, I’ve even had to employ my husband as my assistant!”
And so with baby Mary gurgling happily away in the background and with work to be done, we say goodbye. Like many after watching the competition, I felt a powerful urge to pick up a paintbrush but I think I’ll leave it to the professionals. I know for certain I could never have kept my cool with Nile Rodgers, even on the outside.
Christabel's tips for aspiring artists
- The first thing you must do, as much as might not want to, is get on to Instagram. Get to grips with hashtags and how to use Instagram well. It’s so useful for getting your art out there and people can find your work.
- Try to find some advocates for your work; anyone who can help you get out there and show other people.
- Practise, practise, practise. Experiment like mad with all different things that you’re not used to working with.
- Don’t be too precious. You will probably throw away a lot of the work you’re starting out with because it’s a process. Whenever I start a new painting, I start with the attitude that this is just practice – ‘I’ll start with this and see how it goes’. That big canvas you’ve bought does not have to be the one that will prove whether or not you’ve got it. You can always start again.
- Experiment with different coloured backgrounds. I love a peppermint green, it fits really well under skin tones but you could use brown or even black. Pyschologically it’s better to paint in colour, rather than white.
