Miriam Escofet’s mixed media piece ‘What will survive of us…’ has been selected for the 7th John Ruskin Prize competition, which runs from the 16 January- 2 Feb at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London E14 0JW. This piece also won the Smallwood Architect’s Prize at last year’s Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition.
Selected from nearly 3000 entries, the John Ruskin Prize called for artists to explore the theme ‘From the Eye to the Hand’.
’This work is an allegorical portrait of my father,’ says Miriam, ’who is also a painter. The composition includes ’portraits’ of some of my favourite works of his, and details of some of his paintings which have been re-contextualised. The work is a combination of keenly observed realism and slight abstraction. The use of mixed media allowed me to find a unique language through the piece. The work is a homage to my father and what I feel I have inherited from him - the artist’s way of seeing beauty. It is also intended as a biographical portrait that asks what is left of us at the end of a life, a question that is very prescient for my father now. The title is borrowed from a sentence in Philip Larkin’s ’An Arundel Tomb’, which reads "What will survive of us is love". By removing the last word the meaning of the sentence becomes more of an open question.’