surprisingly I find myself not watching the end anymore.. I do not need to know who wins..bc thats the part where the Judges go to questionable results. I enjoy much more the actual painting!
Season 7 was filmed shortly after the first Covid-lockdown, during a period of careful optimism (but still before the vaccines). She's old and due to previous conditions, she was high-risk, therefore not attending (she still moderated the weekly facebook painting sessions that had two seasons during lockdown, it was called "portrait artist of the week", everybody was at home and they had a zoom meeting that was shared as live on the facebook page of skytv. Every week a previous winner or semi-finalist of the show was painting a famous person and everybody was invited to join and post their versions, the next week the judges showed their selected favourites. They always invited interesting people so the conversation alone was worth watching). If you observe carefully, you can see that everybody is keeping more distance than usual (no handshakes or such) and there is no public invited. In the seasons after this she comes back, she retired from the program after filming season 10 which was broadcasted earlier this year (some episodes are available here on different channels).
Even though I didn`t like the artist, of the three they picked for the finalists, I grudgingly had to admit that her`s was the best, IMHO. It`s too bad Ryan didn`t finish the jacket instead of leaving it a huge black blob- maybe even a few highlights or something. Then I would have said his was the best.
