Newcomer wins biggest art prize

Lord Attenborough presented the award

Artist Katie Pratt has won the UK's most generous award to contemporary painters - the £30,000 Jerwood prize.

A record number of artists competed for the prize and Pratt won from a shortlist of six - made up of herself, Peter Archer, Ian Davenport, Basil Beattie, Marta Marce and Tim Renshaw.

Pratt creates unusual canvases with stellar subjects and titles like Cassiopeia and The Plough.

She daubs thick paint untidy blobs of paint which comment on chaos.

The prize was founded by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation in order "to celebrate excellence and originality in contemporary painting in the UK."

Past winners of the painting prize include Maggi Hambling, Gary Hume, Prunella Clough and Patrick Caulfield.

Though the Jerwood Prize is held in high regard, critics complain about the impossibility of judging the work of a famous artist with a long career behind them against an exciting newcomer.

An exhibition of the shortlisted artists continues at the Jerwood Gallery, London, untill 17 June and The Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow from 6 July to 21 October.