News / 14 Mar 2025
Textile Design graduate reaches semi-final of Landscape Artist of the Year
BA (Hons) Textile Design
BA (Hons) Textile Design graduate, Rose Dufton, won this year’s wildcard place on Sky Arts' Landscape Artist of the Year 2025 making it to the semi-final of the competition.
Stephen Mangan presents the tenth anniversary series of Landscape Artist of the Year travelling around the country on the hunt for the nation’s best landscape artist. This year 2,000 artists applied and only 48 were selected to take part in six heats. Accompanying the artists at each location are 50 ‘wildcard’ artists hoping to win just one wildcard place in the semi-final. Rose was selected by judges Kathleen Soriano, Kate Bryan and Tai Shan Schierenberg as this year’s wildcard winner for her beautiful painting of Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Rose is a Leeds based print designer and artist who only picked up painting landscapes during the pandemic. Despite being new to landscape art, Rose has already worked on projects for clients such as Turkish Airlines, where she travelled around Turkey painting landscapes like The Blue Mosque.
“I have always watched the show and been a fan of it, but it was actually because of my friend Jo Rance that I applied this year as they were offered an artist place on the show. I then applied and was offered a wildcard place, and so the pair of us made a day of it and went to Bristol for the challenge. I just treated it as a nice day out painting a landscape – I never expected to go through to the semi-final!”
Rose Dufton, BA (Hons) Textile Design graduate
Rose then travelled down to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard for the semi-final and painted a landscape looking out at the Victorian megaship, HMS Warrior.
“The semi-final was intense. Painting in the pods with the cameras and being interviewed by Stephen and the judges felt very pressured. The whole thing felt really surreal. I felt like I was in my telly! I’ve watched the show for 9 years and then all of a sudden, I was on it!”
Rose Dufton, BA (Hons) Textile Design graduate
You can watch Rose on Landscape Artist of the Year here. The final episode of the series aired on Sky Arts on Wednesday 12 March 2025.