Ishbel Myerscough Self-portrait with Bongo, 2018

Articulated in her distinctive, highly detailed visual language here portrait painter Ishbel Myerscough poses with her cat, Bongo.  

Myerscough studied at Glasgow and the Slade Schools of Art; she won the National Portrait Gallery’s annual BP Portrait Award competition in 1995 and as a result was commissioned to paint Helen Mirren’s portrait for the collection and subsequently Sir Willard White. Her portrait Two Girls (1991), was displayed in the exhibition Self at the Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK in 2015 and at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until November 2016. Her work was presented in a joint display Friendship Portraits: Chantal Joffe and Ishbel Myerscough at the National Portrait Gallery in 2015, capturing their very particular artistic collaboration; and recently was included in the exhibitions Only Connect, Royal Academy of Arts, Keeper’s House, London; and Relating Narratives – A Common World of Women, The Horse Hospital, London, 2018.