Chapel resident Pete Jarvis has achieved his hat-trick in getting another watercolour into the Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition. Competition has become very stiff this year with a total of around 1100 entries and the judges selecting just 100 for exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. This year’s painting is entitled Hulk on the Itchen and portrays a rusting boat hull tied up on the bend in the river opposite St Denys in Southampton.

Pete took dozens of photographs over several visits to the riverside at different times of the day in order to get the right lighting and shadows: “It was just asking to be painted” Pete said, “The moment I happened upon the hull floating serenely alongside the west bank of the river I was hooked”. Pete can often be found with sketchbook in hand drawing from decaying and weathered architectural subjects in and around Southampton but very few end up as finished watercolours. “I was very pleased that the judges liked my subject matter and I am looking to producing similar work but in a looser style in future”.

Now in its 23rd year, the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition is the largest watercolour competition in the UK, and is one of the only prizes to celebrate the diversity and beauty of the undervalued medium of watercolour.

The competition celebrates all works produced in water-based mediums, whether they are abstract, figurative or landscape.

The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition offers one of the highest valued prizes in the United Kingdom by awarding a total of £20,000 to artists who demonstrate a high level of skill and creativity.

Prizes include: 1st Prize (£10,000), 2nd Prize (£6,000), the RI Turner Watercolour Award for Young Artists (totalling £2,000), the Smith & Williamson Cityscape Prize (£1,500), and the Penguin Classics Commissioning Prize for Cover Art (£500 and a commission to create the cover art for a Penguin classic).

The 2010 judges are Penny Johnson CBE, Director, Government Art Collection; Lucy Jones, Artist; Desmond Shawe-Taylor CVO, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures; Dr Kim Sloan, Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum; and Frank Whitford, Critic and Writer, Sunday Times.

An exhibition of approximately 100 works will be held at the Mall Galleries from November 2 to November 7, 2010.

Pete’s watercolour shows a detailed view of the door and windows of the Tudor Merchant Hall in Southampton. “It was the way the shadows were cast across the building facade that attracted me first of all” said Pete. “I’m really thrilled the judges selected this piece and it has spurred me on to do more of this type of work in the future”.

The book is called ‘For the poor children of London’, a brief  life and history of Sir John Cass and Sir John Cass’s Foundation. Pete was commissioned to illustrate the buildings. These were done from photographs in watercolour to show the buildings in their best light and in a style that reflects the historical period and in keeping with the design of the book.

Illustration shows St. Botolph-without-Aldgate Church. See further watercolours in illustration.