Award Winners | RBA Annual Exhibition 2024

"I did a few portraits during my A-Levels, quite a few of them ended up being self-portraits, because it was easy to access and photograph. This piece, I was reflecting on Queer History and to do a self-portrait made sense for me because it was a reflection of that. I made a conscious decision, not to paint my piercings, as I wanted to create a piece that had a bit more of a timeless look to it and I thought as soon as I started painting an eyebrow piercing and a septum, it would have given it a certain date and I was trying to emulate a lot of older paintings" - Florence Cooper