Two Wicklow Artists Have Been Shortlisted For The Zurich Portrait Prize Competition.

The winner of the Zurich Portrait Prize will receive a cash prize of €15,000.

From hundreds of entries, the shortlists of this year’s Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize have been announced by the National Gallery of Ireland. 26 artists, working across a variety of media, have made it through to the final stage of the Zurich Portrait Prize, while 20 young artists aged between four and eighteen years old have been shortlisted for the Zurich Young Portrait Prize. Two Wicklow artists are shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize - Shane Blount, for his oil painting Lately I've Been Seeing Rainbows, 2022; and Patrick Bolger (Dublin-based, but originally from Wicklow) for his photograph Louise Kennedy, 2022. 

The winner of the Zurich Portrait Prize will receive a cash prize of €15,000 and will be commissioned to create a work for the national portrait collection, for which they will be awarded a further €5,000. Two additional awards of €1,500 will be given to highly commended works. Judges for the Zurich Portrait Prize are Diana Copperwhite, artist; Anna O'Sullivan, Director of the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; and Nick Miller, artist.

Exhibitions of shortlisted works in both competitions run at the National Gallery of Ireland between 26 November 2022 and 2 April 2023. The exhibition will then travel to the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, where it will be displayed between 3 June and 2 September 2023.