A Newquay artist is on the road to success after her painting won a national award.

Diane Griffiths has been named the winner of the People’s Choice Award in The British Art Prize, Artists & Illustrators Magazine 2024 competition for her painting titled Driving Home, which features the Texaco filling station at the Gannel.

She was awarded first prize following a public vote, which was announced at an awards ceremony held at the London OXO Gallery on Southbank on Thursday, December 5.

Diane was presented with a £1,000 voucher from art supplier Caran d’Ache and a stand-alone six-page feature in the February 2025 issue of Artists & Illustrators magazine, which will be published on December 20.

She said: “It’s been an honour to reach the 50 finalists for The British Art Prize and I’ve been really touched how the community has supported and voted.

“This award allows the public to make their voices heard by voting for their favourite work from the competition’s impressive shortlist. The achievement of winning the People’s Choice Award is quite simply outstanding and it very much feels like a joint win. I may have created the painting, but I couldn’t have done this without everyone making a connection with the painting and voting.

“Driving Home is a painting which works on many levels, which I think is what makes it so successful. The first layer was about capturing something beautiful in what is a fairly mundane activity; showing how an ordinary scene is beautiful if we look at it in the right way.

“The second layer is about highlighting our place under the magnificent and vast starry sky. A reminder that even as we go about our everyday lives, we should occasionally stop and appreciate the world around us, and treasure how we are part of something bigger and spectacular.

“The third layer was about my connection to Newquay. The idea occurred to me one evening on the way back to Newquay, when driving home. The garage sits next to The Gannel, therefore effectively next to an open space.

“The bright red of the garage branding can be seen from quite a distance as you drive or walk along that part of The Gannel. It’s not quite the normal Newquay attraction such as Fistral beach or The Island, but it is iconic of Newquay in a different way.

“I think that captured the imagination of quite a few people, commenting on how it was a different view of Newquay, but still very much the Newquay we know and love.

“The final layer was about connecting to a wider audience. This painting may be of a garage in Newquay but it’s also typical of a garage along many an ‘A’ road. People outside Cornwall recognise it as a garage they may have driven past; either travelling to and from work, collecting the kids from school, picking up some shopping or perhaps going on holiday.

“Many people in Cornwall associate the ‘Nearly There’ or ‘Nearly Home’ trees, on the A30 near Lifton, with arriving in Cornwall and it promotes a powerful emotion of being so close to your end goal or destination, usually either home or holiday. I think more mundane subjects can also provoke those emotions; they just aren’t often painted!

“Many of us have our own version of a nearly home icon; perhaps it a weird shaped building of a supermarket or warehouse, a statue. Some people may think of the Wicker Man in Somerset, a quirky pub, or that garage that was a life-saver because you needed to get something when all the other shops were shut. Everyone has a driving home story or two.

“For me it’s the reassurance of recognisable scenery and the thought of home comforts around the corner. That is what Driving Home means to me. Dorothy had it in a nutshell; there is no place like home!

“The other good news is that Jack, the owner of the Texaco business, is purchasing the painting. A fitting end to this story as the painting will come full circle back home to Newquay! Back home.”