First Prize 2026

Angela Lizon

Essex Emerald

Jackson's Art Prize 2026
Oil
Canvas
10 x 8 cm

£550

“The language of 17th century Dutch art with it’s readymade gravitas – mortality, fragility, ostentation – is at the core of my practice. I combine it with kitsch objects, fairies and animated vegetables, investigating the tension between high and low art.

I started painting aggressive fairies as a response to the well known photograph of a bare chested Putin riding a horse, epitomising to me the hyper-macho posturing prevalent in today’s politics. The symbolic shrinking of violence and aggression to a minimal size renders it harmless. As “fairies for adults” they are influenced in thinking by both the Cottingley fairies and the Flower Fairy illustrations of Cicely Mary Barker, and the magic that happens in a garden when no one is watching.”