Making an Impression Bliss Coulthard · Jackie Liu · Axel Jonsson
In partnership with ArtReview
International Art Prize 2026
London · New York · Paris
Making an Impression Bliss Coulthard · Jackie Liu · Axel Jonsson
Sir Paul Smith has championed artists for more than three decades: through a scholarship at the Royal Academy Schools that has run for over thirty years, a collection of more than 10,000 works shown in Paul Smith shops around the world, and Paul Smith Space, the gallery at No.9 Albemarle Street in London. More than 120 artists have exhibited with Paul Smith through selling exhibitions and specially commissioned projects, alongside works by Damien Hirst, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Banksy.
Now in its third year, the International Art Prize is a free-toenter open call for painting and drawing, presented by Winsor & Newton and Paul Smith’s Foundation in partnership with ArtReview. Each winner is commissioned to make a new work, with a grant from Paul Smith’s Foundation and materials from Winsor & Newton, to be shown and sold through Paul Smith. Winners are selected by leading figures from their own art scenes, part of an international network of judges that includes the directors of Copenhagen Contemporary and Nottingham Contemporary and the Editor-in-Chief of ArtReview.
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International Art Prize 2026
London · New York · Paris
Contents
Bliss Coulthard London
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Jackie Liu New York
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Axel Jonsson Paris
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Enquiries
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For 2026, on the theme “Making an Impression”, exploring the marks, experiences and encounters that shape artistic practice, the Prize commissioned three painters: Bliss Coulthard in London, selected by Katy Wickremesinghe; Jackie Liu in New York, selected by Sergio Pardo López; and Axel Jonsson in Paris, selected by Hugo Vitrani. Past winners have since been named among Britain’s leading portrait painters by the Sunday Times, shown solo in Brussels, and selected as the UBS Art Studio artist at Art Basel Hong Kong.
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International Art Prize 2026
London
Bliss Coulthard Layered, emotive paintings of memory, femininity and personal experience · London
Bliss Coulthard is a painter based in East London, working primarily in watercolour. She studied Fine Art Painting at the University of Brighton before completing a Master’s in Illustration at UAL. blisscoulthard.com · @blissblissblissbliss
Coulthard paints from memory: moments of love, loss and heartbreak, turned into image and atmosphere when words fall short. Drawn to watercolour for its unpredictability, she builds it into dense, layered surfaces or lets it run loose, working from A3 to two metres square. Film, from horror to children’s cinema, is a constant reference; femininity and memory are constant subjects.
“Her preoccupation with femininity, memory, and psychology manifests in a form of storytelling that feels at once naive and dark – deeply personal yet strikingly original.” Katy Wickremesinghe, Founder of The Wick, on selecting Bliss Coulthard
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International Art Prize 2026
London
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International Art Prize 2026
London
A figure sits in an armchair, holding up a hand mirror. Figure, chair and wall dissolve into the same swirling blue-and-white pattern, built up layer by layer in watercolour.
Becoming
2026
Watercolour on paper, framed 152.4 × 121.9 cm Unique work
£6,000 Inclusive of VAT · 100% of proceeds go to the artist Enquiries: Yemaya Amadora · yemaya.amadora@paulsmithsfoundation.org Commissioned for the International Art Prize 2026 On view at Paul Smith, 9 Albemarle Street, London
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International Art Prize 2026
New York
Jackie Liu Portraits of chosen family, painted with tenderness and intention · New York
Jackie Liu (b. 2003, Weston, MA) lives and works in Daly City, California. She graduated from Stanford University in 2025 with a BA (Honours) in Art Practice, receiving the Raina Giese Award in Painting, and has been awarded a full fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center.
Liu paints her chosen family. Working in oil over acrylic, she builds intimately detailed portraits with painstaking slowness, holding fleeting, blissful moments still. She describes her paintings as carrying “serious intent: resistance, healing, survival”, and treats the reclaiming of joy as a radical act.
Her work has been exhibited at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC, and the Museum of Northern California Art, and has been featured in The New York Times. jackieliuart.com · @jackieliuart
“Jackie Liu’s work offers a compelling and intimate exploration of joy as a form of resistance, translating personal and collective experiences into vibrant, emotionally resonant paintings.” Sergio Pardo López, Director, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, on selecting Jackie Liu
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International Art Prize 2026
New York
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International Art Prize 2026
New York
Tina – second-generation acupuncturist, herbal healer and cultivator of care and community – gathers friends, and Soba the therapy dog, to welcome the Year of the Fire Horse. From takeout Korean fried chicken to homemade matcha mochi waffles, the potluck feast shows how small individual offerings can coalesce into collective abundance.
Brunch of Good Fortune
2026
Oil and acrylic on wood panel 91.4 × 61 cm (36 × 24 in) Unique work
$7,930 Inclusive of VAT · 100% of proceeds go to the artist Enquiries: Yemaya Amadora · yemaya.amadora@paulsmithsfoundation.org Commissioned for the International Art Prize 2026 On view at Paul Smith, 88 Wooster Street, New York
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International Art Prize 2026
Paris
Axel Jonsson Richly layered oil paintings of history, mythology and memory · Paris
Axel Jonsson studied at the Gerlesborg School of Art, Stockholm, and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Daniel Richter, where he is now Professor’s Assistant in Figuration. Represented by Galerie Elisabeth und Klaus Thoman, he has held solo exhibitions in Vienna and Innsbruck and shown at Parallel Vienna, Art Antwerp and Enter Art Fair, Copenhagen. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Dalarna and the Kupferstichkabinett of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. @axeljfox
Jonsson’s figurative oil paintings draw on contemporary politics, history, mythology, literature, popular culture and memory, returning to human coexistence and the symbolic life of everyday objects. Each image begins in the imagination and is sketched freehand, without reference, before being built up in many layers of paint, leaving room for intuitive decisions. He looks to the Renaissance for its richness of detail and to Impressionism for its light, and to painters who took on existentially heavy subjects: El Greco, Goya, Böcklin, Soutine and Bacon.
Selected by Hugo Vitrani, Curator, Palais de Tokyo
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International Art Prize 2026
Paris
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International Art Prize 2026
Paris
The work began with Jonsson’s reflections on those whose contributions often go unrecognised. Rather than depicting them directly, it settles on a quieter scene: a young man buttoning his collar before a mirror, rendered with a naturalism edged by humour and absurdity, and a reminder that significance lives in everyday rituals as much as grand gestures.
Making an Impact
2026
Oil on canvas 45 × 45 cm Unique work
€1,800 Inclusive of VAT · 100% of proceeds go to the artist Enquiries: Yemaya Amadora · yemaya.amadora@paulsmithsfoundation.org Commissioned for the International Art Prize 2026 On view at Paul Smith, 32 Rue de Grenelle, Paris
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International Art Prize 2026
Enquiries
Paul Smith’s Foundation was founded in 2020 to better the business skills of creative people working in fashion, visual arts and design, through business mentoring, grant-making and commercial projects. The International Art Prize is presented with Winsor & Newton, makers of artists’ materials since 1832, used by Turner, Munch, O’Keeffe and Hockney, in partnership with ArtReview. All prices are inclusive of VAT, and 100% of proceeds go to the artist. Works can be shipped internationally upon request.
For all sales enquiries please contact: Yemaya Amadora yemaya.amadora@paulsmithsfoundation.org London Paul Smith, 9 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BL New York Paul Smith, 88 Wooster Street, New York Paris Paul Smith, 32 Rue de Grenelle, 75007 Paris
paulsmithsfoundation.org
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