Love Your Galleries This Christmas

You know what SevenStreets loves to do between Christmas and New Year (if that walk to Moel Famau is rained off?) - go visit an art gallery. There’s something about their hushed, contemplative surroundings that acts like a sorbet on frazzled palettes. Just a mooch around the pre-Raphaelites of the Lady Lever, the history of drawing at the Tate, or the sumptuous Romantic canvases of the Walker (National Gallery of the North, don’t forget) is all it takes to reboot your senses, and sooth jagged nerves. Works a treat for us, anyway.

This Christmas, treat yourself to a visit to the Walker and you’ll still be able to enjoy this year’s John Moores Painting Prize - a dazzling confirmation of the possibilities of painting.

We chatted to this year’s winner, Sarah Pickstone, as part of our extensive coverage of the Biennial (yeah, we still didn’t get invited to the party though). We love her work - it was, by some distance, the standout piece in this year’s competition.

WIN A SIGNED CATALOGUE

Now, for SevenStreets readers, we’ve a couple of special Christmas presents. To add to your library we have two copies of the exhibition catalogue. One signed by Patron of the Painting Prize and pop art legend Sir Peter Blake and another signed by Sarah Pickstone herself. How cool is that?

A limited edition print of Laura Keeble’s painting “I’d like to teach the world to sing!” rounds up our prize give away. To be in with a chance of winning one of these money can’t buy prizes just reply by the 22 December with the answer to this question:

In what year did the first John Moores Painting Prize exhibition take place?

Send your answers (marked Walker Competition) to [email protected]

Happy Christmas!

Walker Art Gallery
William Brown Street
(John Moores Prize Exhibition runs to Jan 6, 2013