This is the painting that won the John Moores Painting Prize 2023 - on artist Graham Crowley’s tenth attempt

An artist who entered the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize ten times has finally won with a piece of work inspired by the grubby light in a motorcycle shop.

Graham Crowley, of Suffolk, was named the winner by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool on Thursday, 47 years after he first entered the competition.

His work Light Industry won him the £25,000 prize for the first time, although he has been shortlisted twice before and served on the jury for the prize in 2008.

A jubilant Crowley, who beat off competition from a record 3,357 other entries, said: “The John Moores Painting Prize is without doubt the UK’s pre-eminent painting competition and exhibition. One of my ambitions, apart from painting the best paintings I possibly can, has always been to win.”

Inspiration: Crowley painted the work after visiting a motorcycle dealer in Framlingham, Suffolk, which he described as part workshop and part counter-cultural museum. He said: “What I found enthralling about the place was the light; a diffused, dusty kind of light that emanated from a grubby, obscured skylight.”

See the painting in person: Seventy artworks from the John Moores Painting Prize 2023, including the five paintings on the final shortlist (Social Murder: Grenfell In Three Parts by Nicholas Baldion, Light Industry by Graham Crowley, Stochastic 14 by Emily Kraus, Other Light by Damian Taylor and Champagne Cascade I by Francisco Valdes) will be on display at the Walker Art Gallery from September 16 until February 25 next year.