BA Fine Art student Tianna McIntosh nominated for Freelands Painting Prize 2023

Final year undergraduate Tianna McIntosh was one of 49 students from across the UK to be be nominated for this year’s Freelands Painting Prize.

Launched in 2020, the Freelands Painting Prize celebrates outstanding painting practice at undergraduate level, culminating in a Painting Prize exhibition at the Freelands Foundation’s Chalk Farm Gallery space in the Autumn.

Each year, all higher education institutions around the UK that offer a BA Fine Art or Painting course are invited to nominate a final-year student to submit a work for the prize; either a painting or a work exploring painting in the expanded field.

Tianna McIntosh, an abstract artist who has exhibited in and around Leeds over the duration of her BA Fine Art degree, was nominated to represent the University of Leeds.

Tianna McIntosh, Pollyanna, Pollyanna, 2022. Oil stick, acrylic paint and emulsion paint on canvas.

Tianna McIntosh said:

“The nomination was honestly really quite unexpected, so I’m immensely appreciative. I only very recently started thinking of myself as an actual painter, so it’s lovely to be recognised as one in such a prestigious manner.

“I’m super thankful towards both the teaching staff and technical staff in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies for considering me for such an opportunity, and also for helping me photograph and stretch my works too.

“The act of being nominated alongside so many other really incredible artists has been very exciting. It has imbued me with a renewed sense of vigour regarding the current paintings I’m working on for our degree show.

“Like my other pieces, they are informed by an automated process so are very spontaneous, compositionally dense works but this time I’m working on a much larger scale than I have done in the past. This poses a really fun challenge and I am intrigued to see the trajectory my work will continue to take after I graduate.”

Tianna McIntosh, Reaching a New Refutation of Time and Space (Side B), 2022, Oil stick and acrylic paint on found wooden door.

Julia McKinlay, Lecturer in Fine Art in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, said:

“Tianna was nominated for the Freelands Painting Prize 2023 because, over the course of her degree, she has discovered a highly individual and intuitive graphic visual language that she is successfully developing through the materiality of paint.

“Tianna has shown that she is dedicated to her practice and has thrown herself into the studio culture at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. We hope that this nomination will be the catalyst for even more ambitious work in the future.”

Find out more about the Freelands Painting Prize and this year’s nominated artists.

Feature image

Tianna McIntosh, You spend your days horizontal, pining. I spend my days trying to rest, 2022 (detail). Oil stick, acrylic paint and emulsion paint on canvas, 2022.