Paul Emsley (b.1947) lives and works in Bradford on Avon, near Bath. Paul has exhibited widely and won several prizes. This portrait is a large close-up of the head of sixty-seven-year-old artist Michael Simpson, whom Emsley often meets by chance in Bradford on Avon, each time struck by his appearance.

‘I find his face and head visually interesting and with a strong presence,’ he says. ‘I feel it is essentially European, particularly carrying something of the history of Eastern Europe.’ Simpson, who is portrayed with his white hair contrasting strongly with a dark background, has Russian ancestry and studied at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s.

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David Lawton (b.1959) lives and works near Chester, where he is night support worker for the charity Turning Point.

David studied art at Chester College of Further Education before gaining a BA in English and Social Anthropology at Lancaster University. His work has been exhibited widely including the BP Portrait Award 2000 which he entered with a portrait of the same sitter as his entry for this year, his friend Stephen Player, a San Francisco-based illustrator.

While the last portrait of him was a nude study, this one is a head and shoulders ‘mug-shot’ of a still but intense facial expression set against a plain dark background.

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Born in Sweden, Johan Andersson moved to England at the age of eight. He is currently studying fine art at Central St Martin’s Art and Design College, London where he gained a Foundation Diploma in 2005. His work was exhibited as part of the Direction 2007 Group show at London’s Lethaby Gallery.

This portrait is of his friend Tamara; their friendship adds a silent tension which is revealed in the shyness of Tamara’s demeanour. ‘This insecurity of posing nude,’ he says ‘is evident in the awkwardness of the pose.’ Johan says he was trying to challenge attitudes to voyeurism through his portrait.

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Born in the Czech Republic, Hynek Martinec currently works as a painter in Prague, Paris and London. This large portrait is of his girlfriend Zuzana Jungmanova in his Paris studio captured in microscopic facial close-up wearing sunglasses.

The photographic precision of the painting results in striking detail in the execution of the sitter’s hair and skin tones and in the reflection in her sunglasses.

She says of the finished work ‘when I look at my painted twin I get a frisson’.

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