The Herbet Freehills Kramer Portrait Award is a painting competition celebrating the very best artists working in the genre today. An exhibition of forty-six shortlisted artists is on show at a free exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery until 12 October, 2025. Among the broad, rich and fascinating approaches to portraiture exhibited is Inset Day, 2025, a painting by Yvadney Davis. Davis is an award-winning Black British contemporary portrait artist from South London, whose work has been described as “a love letter to the Windrush Generation of her grandparents and its descendants, combining soulful brush strokes and defiant colour with iconic design elements of the ‘West Indian front room’.” In this oil and acrylic portrait of the artist and her daughter on canvas we see the living room motif and the domestic space used to convey another facet to daily life and its quiet politics. The stylishly dressed Yvadney (she knack for good clothing and patterns, having studied Fashion Design at Central St Martins before becoming a painter) gazes wearily at the viewer, while her daughter leaps joyously on the sofa behind her. The image is a highly relatable picture of parenthood – played out in the tension between the mother’s composure and the child’s play. It’s a simple but perfect conjuring of the juggle of parenthood when school is closed – all the more resonant during the long days of summer.

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