Artist Mary Jane Ansell (British artist)

Mary Jane Ansell is a previous finalist in the prestigious BP Portrait Award in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2012 and has been selected several times for the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition and The Threadneedle Prize. Based in the UK she shows internationally with recent group and solo exhibitions in London, New York, Singapore and LA. Ansell's work draws influences from a multitude of inspirations, her sitters become characters imbued with a narrative that Ansell says develops collaboratively as she works with them, at times autobiographical , drawing memories from childhood or her response to the current complexities of politics and issues of gender, drawing too from the language of classical portraiture to the world of haute couture and with an appreciation for a refined technique that evokes the past but with a resolutely modern viewpoint.