Scottish artist Callum Innes has won the �30,000 Jerwood painting prize.

The Edinburgh-born painter, who has been compared with Mark Rothko, creates large-scale minimalist and monochromatic paintings.

Shortlist

Graham Crowley Lisa Milroy Callum Innes Nicky Hoberman Paul Morrison Pamela Golden

Innes, who has been nominated for the Jerwood and Turner prizes in the past, fought off competition from well-established artists Graham Crowley and Lisa Milroy and the recognised talent of Paul Morrison, Nicky Hoberman and Pamela Golden.

The Jerwood remains the most valuable single prize awarded to an artist in the UK and attracts submissions from many leading British painters.

Innes has been exhibiting widely across the UK, Europe and the United States for the last 15 years.

The judges praised his work for "the combination of abstract painterly skills and visual authority in a severely limited palette".

He was presented with the �30,000 prize by Tony Banks MP on Wednesday.

Exhibition

The 2002 judging panel were Charles Saumarez Smith, Norbert Lynton, Frank Cohen, Andrea Rose and Keith Patrick.

The Jerwood Painting Prize is based on open submission of works chosen by the artists. The short list is selected from original works and the final decision is taken from the paintings hung in the exhibition rather than the artists' current standing.

Almost 500 artists entered between one and three works into the competition.

Innes' work, compared with that of Mark Rothko and artist Lisa Milroy, has focused on blocks on colour on square cavanses of differing sizes.

His technique of atmospheric abstractions has been described as "unpainting".

Headline-grabbing

"Each finished painting thus suggests a freezing in time of the otherwise momentary arrest of an ongoing process," wrote the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin.

The Jerwood prize does not generate as much controversy as the headline-grabbing Turner prize, but is held in high regard.

But critics have complained of the impossibility of judging the work of an established artist against an exciting newcomer in the same competition.

Past winners of the painting prize include Maggi Hambling, Gary Hume, Prunella Clough and Patrick Caulfield.

The exhibition of the short listed artists is currently running at the Jerwood Space in Southwark, south London until 7 July.

It then moves to the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery from 19 July to 27 October.