I was over the moon to receive an invitation from the ING Discerning Eye, on behalf of Carol Leonard, to provide a number of paintings for this year’s exhibition.

Carol Leonard has been a huge support to me throughout my career as an artist. The other ING selectors this year are… Will Gompertz, Director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum; Adebanji Alade, President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters; Gabrielle Blackman, one of the UK’s leading interior designers; Nina Murdoch, award-winning painter; Paul Carey-Kent, art critic and curator; and Carol Leonard, collector.

The ING Discerning Eye annual exhibition is a show of small, domestic-scale works independently selected by six prominent figures from different areas of the art world: two artists, two collectors, and two critics. The selectors choose both the publicly submitted works and works by personally invited artists. Each selector’s choice is their own alone and is hung in separate sections to give each its own distinctive identity.

The impression emerges of six small exhibitions within the whole. It provides a rare opportunity for works by lesser-known artists to be hung alongside contributions from internationally recognised names. The only restrictions are that the pieces must be for sale, the artists UK-based, the size of the work (50 cm in any dimension), and that the selectors choose at least 25% of their section from the open submission.

The annual exhibition has been generously supported by our exhibition sponsor, ING, since 1999.

The 2024 ING Discerning Eye Exhibition will be open at the Mall Galleries and online from Friday 15 to Sunday 24 November 2024.

Artists can benefit from many prizes offered by both ING and a number of other generous sponsors.

  • ING Purchase Prize, £5,000
  • The Discerning Eye Founder’s Prize, in honour of Michael Reynolds, £2,500
  • The Discerning Eye Chair’s Purchase Prize, £1,000
  • The Mervyn Metcalf Purchase Prize, £500
  • Parker Harris Prize: one year’s subscription to The Art Ladder mentoring program for artists and two one-to-one mentoring sessions, worth £600
  • Tabish Khan’s Critic Purchase Prize, £200
  • The Discerning Eye Sculpture Prize, £300
  • The Discerning Eye Cityscape Prize, £300
  • The Discerning Eye Landscape Prize, £300
  • The Discerning Eye Portrait Prize, £300
  • The Discerning Eye Print Prize, £300
  • Regional Prizes: 7 prizes of £250 each awarded to an outstanding entry from the national regions.