The Judge’s Choice Awards in Jackson’s Art Prize 2025 are selected by six industry experts that make up the Guest Judges Panel. We invited each of them to the studio to talk about their journeys in the art world, and what they will be looking for amongst the entries. This article will be updated as the Guest Judge interviews are released.
Jackson’s Art Prize 2025 Guest Judges
Anita Klein: Printmaker and painter, fellow and past president of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers
Anne Rothenstein: Artist represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, RWA Academician
Péjú Oshin: Curator, writer, and lecturer whose work sits at the intersection of art, style, & culture
Hugo Barclay: Director of Affordable Art Fair UK, Curator, and Art Advisor
Joshua Donkor: Artist, member of the Contemporary British Portrait Painters
Andrew Torr: Artist, winner of Jackson’s Art Prize 2024 with his painting ‘Estate’
Interview Release Schedule
15th January Anita Klein
21st January Péjú Oshin
28th January Hugo Barclay
4th February Andrew Torr
11th February Joshua Donkor
18th February Anne Rothenstein
Anita Klein
Anita Klein, printmaker and painter, fellow and past president of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers is one of Jackson’s Art Prize 2025 Guest Judges. In this interview, she tells us about her practice, a poignant career highlight, and the artworks that have inspired her over the years.
Josephine: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your artistic practice?
Anita: My work is about my family and myself and it’s really an expression of gratitude and wanting to celebrate small moments, things in life that I feel very grateful for. As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that life is full of ups and downs and we all have pain, but that there are peak moments, which are often things that we may not even notice at the time. Things like pushing past our family to get to the bathroom mirror or having a cup of tea or having a swim or watching television with somebody…Those small things are the things that we would all miss if they were taken away from us, far more than the photo album version of reality, which is nearly always birthdays and holidays. I work without mirrors, without any visual reference. I don’t use photographs or a model to look at. I draw how things feel inside and I’m aiming to express really more of a physical feeling of what I enjoy most about life rather than what it looks like from the outside.
Angel with Winter Sky, 2023
Anita Klein
Acrylic on canvas, 76.5 x 102 cm | 30.1 x 40.1 in
Josephine: Can you tell us about a career highlight or any memorable moments you’ve had as an artist?
Anita: I think the most valuable moments in my career have been when my pictures have touched somebody personally. I once had an exhibition where a woman came up to me afterwards and said ‘Your work makes me love my children more’, which I thought was one of the most lovely things that anybody’s ever said. Sometimes people buy my pictures to commemorate a birth or an important moment in their lives and I feel very honoured. Likewise, a lot of my work is hung in hospitals all over the UK, and I do frequently get messages from people who’ve been a patient, a family member, or even a doctor or nurse, saying how consoling my pictures have been to them in times of quite intense difficulty. So I suppose that I would say that those moments, those sort of messages are the highlight of my career.
Maggie on the Train, 2023
Anita Klein
Acrylic on canvas, 77 x 102 cm | 30.3 x 40.1 in
Josephine: What exhibitions or artists have inspired you over the last year?
Anita: My work is mostly inspired by 14th century Italian frescoes, those are the pictures that I find most moving. When I finish a painting, I quite often try to imagine it in a little corner of a church somewhere, being seen by someone in 500 years time, and I hope that my picture will speak to somebody about my life being the same as theirs, even though we live in quite different times and places. I think art should be about being human, and it should transcend fashion and news. I’m not interested in making grand statements, but I think speaking from one human heart to another is what I’m looking for.
Artistically, in terms of style, I’ve been influenced by every piece of art that I’ve ever seen. I went to the exhibition at the British Museum of Picasso printmaking and was as always bowled over by Picasso and came away very inspired to make more prints.
Beach at Rye, 2024
Anita Klein
Acrylic on canvas, 102 x 77 cm | 40.1 x 30.3 in
Josephine: How important or helpful do you think awards and competitions are to artists today and what makes a good competition?
Anita: I think competitions are really valuable. I won a few prizes when I was younger and it’s just fantastic. It’s such a great boost. It’s very difficult being an artist and keeping on making something that you believe is valuable and nobody even noticing. In the way that most careers have career progression where you might be promoted, as an artist there’s very little of that. You just soldier on. So any sort of any sort of award is fantastic. The few that I’ve ever won have made a huge difference to me.
Josephine: Are you looking forward to selecting the winner of your own Judges Choice award?
Anita: I’m fascinated to see what what people send in. I’ve led quite an isolated life as an artist, mostly because I’ve been bringing up my own children and then grandchildren and I’ve never been part of a studio group or complex. So I don’t see much of what other people do. And I think that’s worked in my favour in a lot of ways, because my own style has become more individual over the years in that I just don’t know what other people are doing. But it will be really interesting to see what’s what’s going on in art, and particularly in painting now.
The Apple Tree, 2022
Anita Klein
Linocut on paper, 49 x 40 cm | 19.2 x 15.7 in
Josephine: What will you be looking for amongst the submissions?
Anita: I will be looking for art that expresses an individual and an emotion, and is not frightened of being human. I’m not really looking for cleverness. I have a bit of an aversion to things that are copied from photographs, but I don’t want that to be too much of a warning because I may well really be fall for a picture that comes from a photograph! But generally, I feel that photographs do that work better and painting should be something else. And beyond that I hope I’m not going to be looking for work that’s like my own. I’m very open to loving something that is completely different from anything I could do myself.
Peonies, 2022
Anita Klein
Acrylic on canvas, 76 x 61 cm | 29.9 x 24 in
Josephine: What advice would you give to artists who are thinking about entering Jackson’s Art Prize 2025?
Anita: I would say go for it and enter, and don’t be disappointed if you don’t win or even aren’t shortlisted. These things are a bit of a lottery, even though those of us who are judging will be looking really carefully at everything. Some things just don’t stand up very well to being on a screen.
I would say take as good photographs as you possibly can. Professional photographs make a huge difference to how well your work is viewed. And try not to be disappointed. I have picked myself up from rejection so many thousands of times over the last 40 years. Just enter again next year because it will be different judges, and it’s all a matter of taste to a certain extent.
This article will be updated as the Guest Judge interviews are released.
Further Reading
How We Collaborate With Artists
Jackson’s Art Prize 2024 Exhibition at the Affordable Art Fair
Art Fair Checklist for Artists
Expert Advice on Making Your Way as an Artist
Visit Jackson’s Art Prize website
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