Selected Painting: Stripes (Self-Portrait), Oil on Copper, 18” x 24”, 2025, © Doris Rose

GREY COUNTY, Ontario — Canadian artist Doris Rose has been selected for the 2026 Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London, UK.

Formerly known as the BP Portrait Award, this exhibition is one of the world's leading showcases for contemporary portrait painting, attracting thousands of international submissions annually, with only a small number selected for exhibition in London before touring the UK. This year's 52 exhibited works were selected from over 1,474 entries from artists across 63 countries.

“I’m incredibly honoured to have been selected and to become part of the history of this exhibition,” said Doris. “I’ve been collecting the exhibition catalogues since I was a child, and it’s been a long-term career goal of mine to be recognised alongside such exceptional painters.”

Doris’ selected work, Stripes, is a self-portrait oil painting on a copper panel exploring perceptual distortion informed by lived experience with invisible illness. Using layered oil painting techniques, the work creates a shifting triple-exposure effect that translates altered sensory perception into visual form.

“Much of my recent work explores the instability of perception and the surprising link between chronic migraine and ADHD and how they alter my sensory experience of the world,” said Doris. “I wanted the painting to sit somewhere between realism and distortion, where the image feels simultaneously present and difficult to fully grasp.”

Raised in Toronto with a current studio practice in rural Ontario, Doris has built one of Canada’s most engaged art communities online through her painting and behind-the-scenes educational art content, with over 260,000 followers and 150 million total views across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Doris’ self-portrait Stripes will be exhibited in the HSFK Portrait Award which runs from June 25 to October 7, 2026, at the National Portrait Gallery in London, with free public admission, before touring the UK.

Photo of the artist Doris Rose in her studio, 2026 © Kelsey Vansickle

About the Artist

Doris Rose is a contemporary-realist portrait artist based in Ontario, Canada. Born in the UK and based in Canada, she holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University (2013), where she received the top entrance scholarship. Specialising in old master and photorealistic oil painting techniques, her most recent portraiture series, Blur, explores the perceptual distortions of living with chronic migraine and ADHD. With over 260,000 followers and 150 million total views across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, sharing her work and art tutorials, Doris has built one of Canada’s most engaged art communities online. dorisrose.com | @dorisroseart

About the HSF Kramer Portrait Award

The HSF Kramer Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery is one of the world’s most established and internationally recognised exhibitions dedicated to contemporary painting. Formerly known as the BP Portrait Award, the annual exhibition attracts approximately 120,000 visitors in London and has helped elevate the careers of some of the world’s most celebrated portrait artists. The 2026 exhibition runs from June 25 to October 7, 2026, before touring the UK. View the National Portrait Gallery Release →

Media Contact

Doris Rose
dorisrose.com
Media enquiries: dorisrose.com/contact
Press Kit: dorisrose.com/presskit

Read the Story Behind StripesHow living with migraine and ADHD shaped the painting.Click to read ↓Close the story ↑

by Doris Rose

Stripes is part of an ongoing series called Blur, in which I explore how painting can communicate experiences that are difficult to describe with words. The series began with a simple question: How do you paint an invisible illness?

I have lived with chronic migraine for as long as I can remember. Although headache is its best-known symptom, migraine is a complex neurological disease that affects the way the brain processes sensory information all day, every day. Long before and after an attack, perception can feel altered. The migraine brain is hypersensitive to the world around it. Light becomes harsher, sounds louder, movement more overwhelming, and even gentle touch can become uncomfortable or painful. These experiences are largely invisible to everyone else, making them difficult to explain.

For a long time I searched for a visual language to describe this. The obvious imagery (lightning bolts, fractured skulls, or expressions of pain) never felt truthful. They illustrated the intensity of headache pain, but not the everyday reality of living with migraine or the subtle ways it shapes how I experience the world.

During the pandemic, when meeting with portrait sitters became more difficult, I found myself repeatedly painting close friends, family, and increasingly, myself. Instead of changing the subject, I began changing the way I painted. I started experimenting with motion blur, multiple exposures, soft focus, and layered oil painting techniques. These paintings began to explore how perception itself can feel.

As the series developed, I became increasingly interested in the growing body of research exploring the relationship between migraine and ADHD. Studies continue to show a strong association between the two conditions. Living with both, I began to recognise how closely their sensory experiences overlap: the feeling of information arriving faster than it can be processed, attention shifting, and the world becoming simultaneously vivid and overwhelming. They both make me hyper aware of the world around me, but also more sensitive to it. Although they are distinct neurological conditions, they often shape my perception in remarkably similar ways. Stripes grew out of that intersection.

The work is painted in oil on copper, a painting surface with a long history but one that is rarely used today. I was drawn to copper because of its extraordinary warm luminosity. By leaving areas of the metal exposed, the surface catches and reflects light differently as the viewer moves around the painting, allowing the image to subtly shift with changing light. Painting on copper also presented its own challenges. Its smooth, non-absorbent surface made the earliest layers difficult to control, requiring patience as the paint gradually built enough texture to grip itself.

Although Stripes is rooted in my own experience, I don't see it as a portrait of migraine or ADHD alone. It is a portrait of inner overwhelm. My hope is that it encourages viewers to consider how differently each of us experiences the same world, and how much of another person's reality can remain unseen.

Exhibition & Tour · 2026–2027

EndedNational Portrait Gallery · London25 June – 7 October 2026

Upcoming · Tour stop 1Derby Museums · Derby21 November 2026 – 21 February 2027Exhibition details →

Upcoming · Tour stop 2The Gallery at The Arc · Winchester5 March – 9 June 2027Exhibition details →

Grant Acknowledgements

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