‘Hilariously dangerous’ self-portrait drawn by prisoner wins prime artwork prize and £100 award
The ‘plain daft’ drawing by an inmate at Belmarsh was awarded the most prestigious award in the Koestler Arts competition
The self-portrait
A sketch by a prisoner won a £100 ‘platinum’ prize after judges decided it was among the best 7,500 artworks entered into an annual competition. The drawing, showing a person with wide-apart eyes, thin lips, wonky nose, and bits of string for hair – as well as no ears – was awarded the most prestigious award.
The artist, a prisoner at HMP Belmarsh, an 800-capacity jail in south east London, was also handed a £100 prize for his work after entering it into the Koestler Arts competition.
Thousands of prisoners from jails across the UK send in their creative works to the charity, with the artworks shown at an annual exhibition at London’s Southbank Centre.
Judges dole out a total of £32,000 in prize money to the ‘best’ artists, who can submit sculptures, paintings, drawings, portraits, needlework, poetry, mosaics, song writing, music and digital art. Among the judges in 2025 included a ‘panel of 100 art world experts’, as well as recently released prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and the poet Inua Ellams.
The judges are told to look out for ‘skill, effort, ambition and unique narratives’, according to the Koestler Arts website.
Set up in the 1960s by writer Arthur Koestler, the charity is aimed at rewarding prisoners for their creative work, which was praised by then Tory Home Secretary R.A Butler. He said at the time the Koestler Arts – originally called The Koestler Trust – was ‘an imaginative way to stimulate the mind and spirit of the prisoner’.
And this sketch – by an unnamed inmate – was voted among the ‘best of the best’,’ with the prisoner being handed £100 and given a platinum certificate to hang in his cell.
But some critics slammed the award, claiming it looked like the drawing of a ‘four year old’, and that it was ‘child-like’, ‘naive’ and ‘unsophisticated’. One artist, who didn’t want to be named, but has a Masters in Fine Art said: “Yes, this drawing is naive and unsophisticated – for most people they’d take one look and presume it was a very young child’s drawing.
“For me to be a true judge, I would need to see the body of work this artist has created previously. This would allow me to form a more rounded opinion of this portrait.”
She said that many famous artists produced what looked like ‘simple’ artworks – like Cy Twombly’s ‘scribbles’ or Jackson Pollock’s ‘random paint splatterings’ – but that a body of work helped support their other works.
Art student Gabby Pollock, however, said she thought it was a ‘load of rubbish’. She said: “For this to be awarded a top prize is just plain daft – and I imagine the so-called artist entered it into the competition for a joke. The joke is on the judges I think as the artist walks away with £100, so good on him.”
The inmate who submitted the artwork – called simply ‘Portrait’ – wasn’t named by judges.
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