ING Discerning Eye exhibition: 'The power of human creativity '

Alice by Victoria Sills - (Victoria Sills)

“These are my children,” gestures Curtis Holder to walls packed with art in his room at the ING Discerning Eye exhibition at Mall Galleries. Holder recently won Sky Portrait Artist of the Year but here is working in a capacity as one of the guest ‘selectors’ at this annual competition event which has run since 1990 and has been sponsored by ING for 27 years.

Holder, alongside sculptor Polly Morgan, photographer Richard Ansett, writer and broadcaster Rosie Millard OBE, art historian Dr Chris Stephens and collector Nicholas Scott, took on the mind-messing task of going through 6500 entries over two heavy days, emerging bleary-eyed and somewhat battle scared with their own selections.