Making Her Mark

SAMIRA ADDO ’s work electrified judges on Sky Portrait Artist of the Year. SALLY HALES met up with her to find out what the future holds 

An inspiration board hangs on the wall of the artist’s London studio. Pinned to it are paintings by Ryan Hewett and Jerome Lagarrigue. Next to them, she has scrawled notes on their techniques and provocations for her process. This desire to learn has taken Samira Addo from full-time quantity surveyor with an art A Level to reigning Sky Portrait Artist of the Year – the youngest person and only amateur to take the title – in just a few years. Judge and award-winning portrait painter Tai Shan Schierenberg called her treatment of paint “magical”. Sat in her small studio, the self-effacing painter reflects on her success, a sunny nature belying her determination to follow her dream.

Samira looked composed throughout her time on the show as she coolly navigated painting celebrities from life in four-hour timeslots, the camera relentlessly trained on her. “The first time I tried to apply paint or sketch, my hand was shaking,” she says of the filming process. But she quickly overcame any nerves. “Afterwards, I realised it was because I used to dance and perform. What I’d learned then helped me. You have to do your own thing and not pay attention to the audience’s reaction.” She was able to focus on the challenge in front of her, even with the added pressure of capturing a likeness of a well-known face, painting musician Emil Sandé, actor Robert Bathurst, fashion icon Zandra Rhodes and actress Kim Cattrall in her expressive, gestural style. “I didn’t distanced myself from my perception of the person – but I looked at them as just shapes,” she says. “I tried to not let anything else influence me.”