2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists by Lismore Regional Gallery

2020 HURFORD HARDWOOD PORTRAIT PRIZE 7 November 2020 - 31 January 2021

2020

FINALISTS

Denise Alison Louise Allerton Ann Arora Marjan Bakhtiarikish Konrad Bock Renè Bolten Karen Jane Borger Jacob Boylan Amanda Bromfield Filippa Buttitta Foong-Yue Cheah Molly Darvall Michelle Dawson Janine Dello Peter Derrett OAM Dawn Duncan-Smith Facing Australia (Raimond De Weerdt & Karen Donnelly) Kathryn Fenton Rikki Fisher Miriam Fraser Todd Fuller Shirley Gibson

Anna Glynn Amala Groom Michèle Heibel Hilary Herrmann Martyn Hodge Nicole Kelly Sadami Konchi Elena Larkin Susan Ma Ali Marshall Samuel Massey Shannon McCulloch Genevieve Memory Zilpha Menghetti Libby Moore Anh Nguyen Antoinette O’Brien Arion Ocean Jessica O’Connor Miriam O’Grady Travis Paterson Ana Pollak Jamie Preisz Marian Quigley

Caitlin Reilly Gwen Robson Matthew Sansom Lynn Savery Loribelle Spirovski Fleur Stevenson Lisa Stonham Robyn Sweaney Joe Swepson Fiona Taylor Lenny Thurgate Seabastion Toast Datsun Tran Edward Trost Melanie Valentine Asher Veling Jacklyn Wagner Rudiger Wasser Harry Westera Edwin Wilson Caroline Zilinsky Michelle Zuccolo

The 2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize is kindly supported by Hurford Hardwood

The Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Choice award is kindly supported by The Friends of the Gallery Lismore Regional Gallery is supported by

DENISE ALISON Lives and works in Girards Hill, NSW A delicate moment in transformation 2019, digital photograph on cotton paper $935 Sitter: Maude Boate aka Michael Gates Maude Boate aka Michael Gates has been the grand old dame of Australian Drag for 32 years. Maude was born and raised in Lismore NSW by a former beauty queen and a much-respected Mayor. She has won awards for her gowns, costumes and famous foam head pieces. These have been successfully showcased everywhere including in the Priscilla Queen of the Desert musical. Maude is one of the Glambassador Drag Queens in the Broken Heel Festival. I have photographed Maude many times over the years in the incredible costumes she designs and sews herself. I wanted to capture the art of drag before the glitz of wigs, costume and heels. I caught Maude in her sewing room getting ready for a performance. She was in her dressing gown and Ugh boots. It was a privilege to get a glimpse of her in the privacy of transformation. We call her the Queen of Lismore.

Denise Alison is a self-taught Photographer with over 30 years experience. Originally from the Northern Beaches in Sydney, she has lived in Lismore for 20 years. Her portfolio includes work with bands, weddings, surfing and music magazines. Currently Denise curates the Humans of Lismore Facebook page which has 22,000 followers. The page includes stories and photographs which document the flavour and diversity of her local community. It is widely admired. Deniseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lifelong commitment to photography is evidenced by the special quality of her portraiture. Her skill is capturing the unguarded moment. 4

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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LOUISE ALLERTON Lives and works in Sydney, NSW Naomi, Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Be Blue 2020, digital print on transparency $650 Sitter: Naomi & Micheline During the initial hard Covid-19 lockdown in Sydney, 2020, there was really no way to connect with other humans other than through screen-based media. So, joining the throngs of innovators who needed creativity to survive, I decided to explore portraiture through technology and enjoy its errant glitches. My aim was to invite artist friends to meet up through an online portal and to collaborate with the technology, experimenting with dodgy internet connections and embracing pixelated and kaleidoscopic lo-fi effects. Ironically the portraits were more interesting as the technology failed, and everyone had a good time. These disembodied portraits are a metaphor for the disconnectedness felt during lockdown periods, whilst offering an altered and creative perspective. The shadows behind each portrait pose a ghostly double, a metaphor for self-reflectivity while the shimmer on the surface of the transparency mimics the screen that we have become so attached and dependent on for contact.

Louise Allerton is an Australian artist/photographer and arts worker, working across photography and video. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the National Art School in 2018, and has since been curated into numerous exhibitions in both Sydney and regional Australia. Much of her photographic work explores human entanglements with landscape and environment, more recently focusing on the multi-dimensionality of matter with particular reference to cross-cultural influences. As an arts worker, she has over 20 years experience working in remote Australian Indigenous communities, facilitating arts practice and managing relationships between Indigenous arts practitioners and non-Indigenous organisations. 5

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ANN ARORA Lives and works in Sydney, NSW Rakesh and Chai 2020, oil on canvas $2,000 Sitter: Rakesh Arora My sitter for this portrait is my husband Rakesh. The painting was made entirely from life alla prima - in one sitting, in the first weeks of the April lockdown. At this time I was feeling anxious about the esculating COVID situation and found that painting my family and domestic sphere was both therapeutic and diartistic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; marking a very particular moment in time.

Ann Arora is an artist and art educator (Cranbrook School) from Sydney with a developing practice that explores representations of people and the landscapes and environments we inhabit. Ann has a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Art and Bachelor of Art Education from The University of NSW. Ann had her first solo show at Sheffer Gallery in September 2013 and has since been selected as a finalist in many prestigious art prizes. Ann was recently artistin-residence at NG Creative Art Residency, Provence (2019) and has exhibited in group exhibitions in France. Her work is held in the collection of the National Westminster Bank and in private collections in Australia, USA and India. 6

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MARJAN BAKHTIARIKISH Lives and works in Albany, WA The Wanderer 2020, oil on panel $6,400 Sitter: Imaginary portrait with partial use of sitter: Ron Baker My approach in creating this portrait was to work from imagination, invention and memories of my years of studies of Old Master works in museums of Italy and Australia. My partner kindly sat for initial poses and studies to help set the mood. Also a mannequin, as was the practice in times past, was useful in constructing the costume. The painting was preceded by numerous drawings and head studies on this theme. The painting was informed by my admiration for the timeless portraits of Rembrandt: the ‘timeless’ portrait attempts to go beyond the particular individual and address all humanity through an idealization that would embrace archetypal human emotions. The Wanderer represents the archetype of the ‘wise old man’ for all of us, as we endure our personal and solitary journey through life in our struggle to transcend the existential crises of our personal lives in the face of uncertain, collective tragedies. Nonetheless, the mystical landscape and The Wanderer’s downcast eyes evoke a quiet sense of equanimity in the wisdom of a life lived to the full.

Marjan studied for four years in Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence, Italy. She received a scholarship to study at the Russian Academy of Art, Florence and then studied with Charles Cecil at Charles H. Cecil portrait studios where she learned “sight-size” drawing and painting. Marjan’s work has been exhibited in a group exhibition in Calendrillo Gallery, New York, USA .and she was recently invited to exhibit in a group exhibition in the historical centre of Rome, Italy. Marjan won the major 2D award in Du Rietz Art Award 2020, QLD and has also become a finalist in the JADA Drawing Award 2020. 7

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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KONRAD BOCK Lives and works in Goonellabah, NSW Self Portrait with Patterns 2019, watercolour and colour pencil on paper NFS Sitter: Konrad Bock Inspired by the recent Archibald Prize and the Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize exhibited at Lismore Regional Gallery, I began to study drawing faces, and learnt more about proportions. I love patterns and wanted to incorporate patterns into the image of my own face. By repeating a line drawing several times in different directions, I created space and shapes that I could fill with colour and pattern. I have used colour to create the multi-faceted reflections of my moods. Yellow – happy and creative, Blue – dark and cranky, Orange – excited, Purple – sad and gloomy, Green – openness and brightness. I like watercolours and colouring pencils because I enjoy colouring in shapes. The two different mediums produce interesting texture differences.

Konrad Bock began his art journey in 2012 when he started Art Tuition with the Ascent Group in Armidale. Initially he worked in acrylics painting patterns on canvas. Konrad exhibited in the Armidale Show in 2012 and won an Achievement Award in the Ascent Art Prize in 2014. After moving to the Northern Rivers in 2014 he joined the art activities at House with No Steps. He began private art tuition in 2016 and has won several local art prizes. He studies faces and tries to include patterns in all his drawings and paintings. Konrad works in different media and likes the textural difference of colour pencil and water colour. 8

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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RENÉ BOLTEN Lives and works in Georgica, NSW Portrait of Julian Louis, Het licht achter de schermen (The light behind the stage) 2020, photograph $6,000 Sitter: Julian Louis Julian Louis painted behind the stage. A painting about the tension of guiding a performance, a lengthy process of try and try again. And in the end, will the audience appreciate, will the audience applaud? Will the viewer respond to the painting?

René Bolten was born 1954 in The Hague, Netherlands. He studied at the Amsterdam Academy for Visual Art Education. René has lived and worked as an artist and much loved art teacher in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, for more than 30 years. He has exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions and was awarded the Northern Rivers Portrait Prize in 2013. Rene’s preferred genres are still life, portraiture and abstracted drawing, he creates work in his studio in Georgica, Northern Rivers region NSW. 9

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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KAREN JANE BORGER Lives and works in Port Macquarie, NSW One is Always the Watcher 2019, oil and block print on canvas $11,740 Sitter: Rhoda Roberts Of two sisters, One is always the watcher, One the dancer (Louise Glück). Arts maven Rhoda Roberts, AO is a respected Bundjalung woman of the Widjabul and Gidabul clans, and a champion of First Nations culture. During 1998 Rhoda’s beloved twin sister disappeared. A small grainy photo of Lois was repeatedly used by the media to raise the alarm, to no avail. Months later Lois’ body was found, but the murderer remains at large. For this painting I chose to honour Rhoda’s quiet leadership whilst evoking the memory of Lois, lost but never forgotten.

KJ Borger is a visual artist and filmmaker who studied at SCA, AFTRS and MIU. “Image-making and photographic, cinematic storytelling are my raison d’etre. I revel in the realisation of characters’ experiences which hold universal truths. I enjoy creating an unique world, often drawn from imagined or bygone days for the viewer to fall into, and be transported through time and space. A distinctive eye developed as a photographer and painter coupled with a love of cinematic language culminates in a timeless appeal.”

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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JACOB BOYLAN Lives and works in Suffolk Park, NSW Caltex Cowgirl At Home in Mullum 2020, silicon and house paint on recycled canvas $1,600 Sitter: Amy Taylor This work is of my friend Amy Taylor, fearless front woman of iconic Melbourne rock band Amyl and The Sniffers, outside my studio in Mullumbimby. Though they are a Melbourne band, Amy grew up in Mullumbimby and often visits her parents when she’s not playing gigs. With the recent success of her band (touring relentlessly, recording music and even picking up an ARIA last year) plus her wild fashion and stage antics, Amy is seen as a trailblazer for women in the alternative music scene. With no time for nonsense, an incredible work ethic and a heart of gold pinned to her denim jacket sleeve, I see Amy as a kind of progressive punk warrior. She is unapologetically herself but like anyone with a public persona, she can often be portrayed as a sort of caricature. For this portrait I wanted to highlight the subtle difference between rock star Amy and Amy at home in a Mullumbimby paddock. Amy for me represents the working middle class, a kind of re-claiming of the ‘Aussie Sheila’ myth for the politically progressive. To portray this I used everyday materials - house paint and a tube of silicon. Jacob Boylan is a visual artist based in the Northern Rivers with a Visual Arts Degree from SCU majoring in printmaking. Jacob’s main practice involves collecting source material from second-hand books and using found imagery through the broad capabilities of screen printing to mix and match with collage, installation and ink transfer. Visual puns and the recontextualising of existing imagery press us to look at banal imagery in new light. The recycling of imagery is important to Jacob’s practice. In an image saturated world, he reduces what he calls “visual pollution”. With a deadpan, tongue-incheek style, and a limited colour pallet, his work explores concepts of Australian identity, often using references to sport, class, colonialism, alcoholism, pub culture and gambling. 11

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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AMANDA BROMFIELD Lives and works in Lennox Head, NSW Army of One 2020, BRT clay, low fire handmade glaze, handmade bushfire ash engobe & underglaze, video Sitter: Amanda Bromfield Amanda Bromfield is a Lennox Head artist who creates awareness about climate change and loss of native species. Bromfield raises the collective consciousness; her major concern being the extinction of the koala which she protests. Army of One consists of two works: a ceramic self portrait of the artist, dressed for protest, as well as a thirty-second video which documents her solitary campaign to create awareness of bushfires and their catastrophic effects on native species populations. Bromfield’s protests for the koalas began in August 2019. For almost twelve months she has been marching the streets of Sydney, the South Coast and the Northern Rivers regions of NSW to create environmental awareness. After the bushfires, Bromfield collected ash and charcoal from burnt-out koala habitats to use in her artwork. The charcoal she collected from the Port Macquarie / Taree bushfire has been embedded into the base of this ceramic sculpture to leave an imprint of burnt timber. From the ash, she has created a black engobe that glazes the base of the sculpture and forms the words that read ‘save our koalas’.

Amanda Bromfield is an emerging Northern Rivers artist. Her works are multi-disciplinary, combining performance, video and clay to create art works. Bromfield’s practice is based on consciousness raising; her work highlights contemporary issues including women’s rights, equality, diversity and loss of native species. Amanda graduated with a Master of Fine Art from the National Art School in 2018. She exhibits locally and in Sydney. She has been a finalist in The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, The Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture, The Fisher’s Ghost Art Awards and The Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize. 12

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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FILIPPA BUTTITTA Lives and works in Lewisham, NSW LOCKDOWN (during Covid-19) 2020, oil on board $12,000 Sitter: Filippa Buttitta As Covid-19 took over the world early this year, an alien simultaneously grew rapidly in my brain, affecting my eyesight. It affected the very faculty an artist needs to see and create work. Confused at the time, I could not understand why I could no longer draw or paint well anymore. In desperation, I visited my optometrist thinking I needed to replace my old glasses. Baffled with my inability to read the largest of print, I was urgently sent to the Sydney Eye Hospital. Regrettably, I learnt of my shocking diagnosis: the discovery of a GBM4, an aggressive and rapidly growing brain tumour of sorts. As Covid-19 spread across the world, the tumour behaved the same way inside my brain. Without warning, it took over my occipital lobe, the area that controls eyesight. There is no known cure for GBM4. Treatments such as surgery to extract the tumour, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are used to prolong life. Thankfully, my eyesight was restored after surgery and I subsequently painted a series of self-portraits. This portrait portrays

Filippa Buttitta is a full-time artist who owns & operates Twiverton Gallery, connected to her studio.Her work is an ongoing journey of exploring and reinterpreting Australian identity, cultural history and most recently, surviving a brain tumour during Covid19. All the themes Buttitta has focused on seem to have a common trigger: dealing with some kind of ‘anxiety’. Buttitta’s work has been selected in several major art prizes including The Archibald Prize, The Archibald Salon DeRefuses, The Doug Moran Prize (semi-finalist), The Lester Prize, The Kilgour Prize, The Mosman Art Prize, The Paddington Art Prize, The Percival Prize and The Portia Geach Memorial Award. 13

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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FOONG-YUE CHEAH Lives and works in Williamstown, VIC Matriarch 2020, coloured pencil on paper NFS Sitter: Madam Chin My grandmother’s face has never quite left me. After years in a nursing home isolated from family and yearning for connection, I witnessed a once fiery woman shattered by vulnerability and broken by loneliness. Sparingly referenced through photographs, and drawing expression and detail from memory, my piece is as I remember her – fraught with fragility and unsung sadness. She is perched on the edge of our old family couch, its optimistic golden hue deliberately left unfinished in contrast to the oppressing emptiness that ultimately consumed her. Madam Chin passed away in 2016. Her ashes have since been reunited with my grandfather at the family temple in her Malaysian hometown.

Foong-Yue Cheah was born in Malaysia and migrated to Melbourne, Australia when he was 7. He has always found solace in visual communications and excelled in various art programs throughout his youth, culminating in a scholarship with Australia’s leading airbrush school. In 2002 He completed an Advanced Diploma in Graphic Design. Since then, his path has led away from the creative field. However art has always remained in his life. Recent events brought on by COVID-19 have prompted him to reacquaint with creativity, both as an escape from daily confines and an act of mindfulness.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MOLLY DARVALL Lives and works in Kyogle, NSW Fly with me 2020, oil on wood NFS Sitter: Nichola Darvall The relationship between humans and the natural world is a delicate gesture, distinguishing a tender mutuality and mental discord, that coexists seamlessly in nature. Capturing the essence of my little sister in fluttered emotions extends our needs to confide and disguise our emotions in youth culture. She is freed and enlightened, however, protected by the realities of perception which are hindered by teenage insecurities. Through her portrayal, I come to understand the complexities of relationships, emotions and even the environment, the process of necessary healing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; revealing the subtleties and resonances of an emotional state between natural elements.

Molly Darvall is an eighteen-year-old Artist/student from the Northern Rivers, NSW. She is completing the HSC this year and hopes to go to university in Melbourne to continue her art studies. She intends to pursue an artistic career inspired by her highly regarded Grandfather, the artist and teacher Michael John Taylor. Three years ago, Molly established her art-making career, drawing pet portraits. After exhibiting her wildlife drawings in an exhibition at the Roxy Gallery in Kyogle Molly has received many commissions from people to do portraits of their pets aiming to capture the animalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; expressions of devotion for their owners seen principally in their eyes and head stance. Molly also draws from emotion, the subtleties and resonances within nature and mental states.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MICHELLE DAWSON Lives and works in Bangalow, NSW HIGHLY COMMENDED Vera 2019, oil on canvas $5,300 2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Sitter: Vera Wasowski 21 March 1934, (although we are pretty sure she lied about her birthdate!)-11 October 2019. My dear friend Vera Wasowski was a force of nature…a holocaust survivor who saw the ultimate revenge on Hitler being ‘a lifetime in which delight has reached me from a hundred sources, and been welcomed.’ She lived a passionate, unconventional and uncompromising life in Australia and as a producer and researcher on This Day Tonight was at the heart of reporting some of the seminal moments in our history. She consequently forged lifetime friendships with some of our most renowned artists, journalists and political figures. Her criteria for friendship was a person without limitations… no ceilings over their heads. In the midst of a sitting for this painting, she asked me if the portrait was going to be glamorous… I said noooooo…. but it is strong! I hope it shows her command of space, the sheer force of her personality and intelligence, but also her vulnerability and the history which haunted her. Or once again, better in her own words, ‘Here’s a strange thing about me if you are ready: I carry out of the ghetto a love of life that is completely irresponsible. I carry many things, too, things that fill up my nightmares. Just as powerful is this irresponsible hunger for life, for beauty.’ Michelle has been working as a professional artist since 1996 and has studied both in Australia and the UK. She has been a finalist in many major art prizes including the Jacaranda Drawing Prize, The Portia Geach Art Award, (Highly Commended), The Bendigo Drawing Prize, The Ravenswood Art Award, The Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize, the KAAF Art Award and the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize. Michelle has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas, including The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Romania. She has also illustrated four children’s books and was shortlisted for the CBCA Crichton Award for Best New Illustrator.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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JANINE DELLO Lives and works in Auldana, SA Is my hair OK? 2020, oil on canvas $1,600 Sitter: Alex Cotterell In my art practice I explore visual culture and I am motivated to make work that delves into issues relating to the contemporary female experience. I have a passion to translate emotions into images that evoke conditions of beauty and narratives that reflect on the impact of cultural anxieties. When I first met Alex I knew I wanted to paint her portrait. She was modelling for a photography workshop and her personality was infectious – friendly and genuine. This portrait shows a more candid side of her having a bit of fun, so my aim was to capture a playful, unconventional pose. I love painting feminine fashion, but I kept the clothing details consciously understated, as I wanted the emphasis on her facial features.

Janine is an emerging artist based in Adelaide, South Australia. Since graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Art from Adelaide Central School of Art in 2016, she has participated in group exhibitions and has been a finalist in several Australian art prize awards, including The Portia Geach Memorial Award and The Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize. Janine had her first solo exhibition in February 2019, at BMG Art Gallery titled “Notes to Self”. Her art practice draws on the iconography of contemporary female culture relating to identity. Through narrative paintings of the female form, she explores the complexities and conflicted emotions surrounding the collective female experience and is particularly interested in the relationship women have with desire and appearance issues. 17

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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PETER DERRETT OAM Lives and works in Lismore, NSW Love in the time of Corona 2020, digital photograph on paper NFS Sitter: Jacklyn Wagner and Liam Wagner The subjects (Jacklyn Wagner and Liam Wagner) were selected because Covid-19 lockdown drew many couples together. Jacklyn is a distinguished photojournalist and I was privileged to be allowed to capture her in a ‘private moment’.

Peter Derrett’s lifetime portfolio of photographic work and awards includes diverse publications like theatre programs, exhibitions and competitions, books, newspapers and magazines. In 2018 he shared a substantial exhibition with Jacklyn Wagner called ‘Heart and Soul’ at Lismore Regional Gallery. 18

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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DAWN DUNCAN-SMITH Lives and works in Maldon, VIC Christopher Mayor 2020, textiles - machine and hand stitched with commercial and hand dyed fabrics $3,740 Sitter: Christopher Mayor After relocating from Melbourne to Maldon in 2017 I joined an artist group where I met Ali Mayor, who was born in India. I heard many stories of her family life in India. I was introduced to her father 92-year-old Christopher Mayor at one of my exhibitions last year, A Colourful Stage of Remembrance held at The Capital Theatre Bendigo. Chris was the first Western journalist in 1950 to interview the mayors of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he was just 22-years-old at the time. Through his involvement with the global organisation Initiatives of Change he met and fostered a lifelong friendship with Gandhi’s grandson Rajmohan Gandhi in 1953. Together they started an Indian weekly news magazine Himmat similar to Time magazine. It’s first cover story in 1964 was China’s first nuclear bomb test. To mark 75 years since the end of World War 2 his story was televised on ABC Australia on the 14th August. I’m very proud and honoured to have created in textiles this portrait of Christopher Mayor telling his story of events recognising an outstanding individual and period in his career and life.

During an art residency at St Vincent’s Hospital in 2014 Dawn Duncan-Smith explored the manipulation and restriction of fabric using machine and hand stitching. She now has a harmonious connection between the sewing machine and the gentle use of needle and thread to tell a story. Dawn’s first solo exhibition, The Story of St Vincent’s 2016, is now part of many St Vincent’s (Melbourne) events. The portrait of Ida O’Dwyer, (1880-1960), was selected for the Open House Melbourne 2019, International Nurses Day & Tunnel of Love Expo. It was displayed along the corridor to the ICU during COVID-19 through 2020.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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FACING AUSTRALIA (RAIMOND DE WEERDT AND KAREN DONNELLY) Raimond de Weerdt lives and works in Lismore, NSW, Karen Donnelly lives and works in Rutherglen, VIC Portrait of Bluey 2020, digital photograph on paper $3,340 Sitter: Bluey Once upon a time Australian slang was embedded into daily language. Nicknames were also assigned rather ironically on the basis of physical attributes. There was Shorty, Stumpy, Lofty, Wingy, Chook, Whippet and Mouse. And then there was Bluey – a name given to red-headed blokes. Historians date the convention to the mid-1850s with the arrival of auburn- haired Irish migrants. During World War One, George Bell a barman from Dubbo enlisted, although his local paper referred to him as ‘Bluey’ Bell. There was Jack Cosgrove ‘Bluey’ Watkins a star rugby league player; Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott a WW2 ace fighter pilot and ‘Bluey’ Clarence Lonsdale who played AFL for Hawthorn in the 1930s. Cartoonist Alex Gurney also immortalised the tradition in the ‘Bluey and Curly’ comic strip. However, ‘Bluey’ has all but disappeared from the Australian vernacular. The Facing Australia artists, recognised nationally for their composite portraiture work in examining identity has turned its lens on the ‘Bluey’ phenomena. Their ‘Bluey’ portrait is not one person but rather 50 portraits that have been stacked and unified: an epitaph on the fast evaporating Australian dialect.

The Facing Australia project was founded in 2002 by artists Karen Donnelly, Tony Nott and Raimond de Weerdt. The project references and engages with the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data to create composite male and female photographic portraits. Through this work Facing Australia questions and interrogates notions of identity; one of the most important debates confronting all Australians in the 21st century. Collectively, the composite portraits contribute to the national visual archive - capturing time, people and place.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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KATHRYN FENTON Lives and works in Safety Beach, NSW Natural Grace 2020, oil on canvas $2,000 Sitter: Lynne Mak My subject Lynne Mak is an artist and friend that I admire greatly on so many levels. Our bond grew slowly over several years where we would meet at various gallery openings. We both moved from Sydney to Coffs Harbour region for a new life in the country around the same time and discovered we had similar connections in the arts field. Lynne has faced considerable personal tragedy and challenges in her lifetime yet it’s her strength and resilience that inspires me the most. Her face has always captivated me and with her luminous complexion and compelling eyes, she exudes beguiling traits of both fragility and strength, and carries herself with so much grace. Lynne is a respected artist in both Sydney and Coffs Harbour and has been a recipient of several art prizes and awards over the past three decades. She didn’t have the opportunities to be serious about her painting till her late 40’s like so many women working full time and raising children, so in the following decades she has worked hard to establish her style, collector base and gallery representation. Kathryn is an Australian figurative landscape artist with an exhibition history spanning 23years. She has had group and solo exhibitions in on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, Sawtell and Urunga regional galleries and selected as a finalist for the past 6 years in the EMSLA National Still Life Art Prize. Kathryn has won portrait and landscape prizes in Coffs Harbour and Sawtell for the past 13 years, including Grand Champion Award in the Sawtell Art Prize. Kathryn has a Diploma in Visual Communication & Graphic Design, Brisbane College of Art (winning Industrial Design Institute of the Year Award) and an Arts Diploma from the Australian Film & Television School, Sydney 1984.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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RIKKI FISHER Lives and works in Nimbin, NSW On Reflection 2019, oil on canvas NFS Sitter: Robert Fisher There he sits, captured in a moment of reflection, having been hard at work on our hobby farm. Taking early retirement, leaving the city behind to live the good life in the country. Or is it? He retired from running a small graphic design business in the suburbs of Melbourne. As the salesman he was forever on the road, making connections, pressing the flesh, having copious amounts of lunches and coffees to clinch that deal, climaxed with the adrenaline rush when a sale is made. In contrast, now he’s in the slow lane of rural life on a farm, with its relentless routine of keeping on top of weeds and slashing paddocks. Living the dream isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Why I selected Rob (my partner) for a portrait - it was this pose I captured. One not often seen, not by the public anyway. To those who know him, Rob is an outgoing person, full of enthusiasm and keen to make a difference. That he is, but I chose to reveal a more intimate side, the reflective side, which makes him the man that I have grown to cherish.

Rikki began her career by completing a Diploma in Art and Design. She worked as a Graphic Designer before establishing her own studio. On selling her business in 2005 Rikki turned her attention to fine art. Awarded National and International recognition, Rikki is accredited as a Master Scratchboard Artist (MSA). In recent years she has turned her attention to Portraiture. Inspired by the Old Masters, Rikki uses traditional methods of painting, using a limited palate. Her goal is to complete a series of oil paintings of the characters of Nimbin. “On reflection” is one of these portraits.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MIRIAM FRASER Lives and works in Bexhill, NSW Eleven 2020, acrylic on canvas NFS Sitter: Elijah Watching my son enter the beautiful and precarious age between childhood and adulthood has inspired me to capture and honour this sacred moment. His eyes feel deeper as he becomes increasingly aware of the adult world and I hope he is guided to continue seeing the beauty and wonder of life even as it becomes more complicated. His body, while still so small, is capable of holding big ideas and even bigger emotions, exposing a complex fragility which is beautiful. Cherishing this moment of boyhood and knowing he will soon leave it behind fills me with both excitement and trepidation, as I wonder what challenges he will face and the adventures that await.

Miriam Fraser studied at the College of Fine Art, UNSW, completing her Bachelor of Fine Art in 2003. Majoring in Painting and Drawing, she has since then experimented in many disciplines including ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, animation and mixed media. An abrupt career change led to further study in 2013, graduating as a Registered Midwife in 2018. This dichotomy has allowed further exploration of the human experience and allowed a beautiful relationship between life and art. Developing a fine balance between these two worlds has been the most recent focus and has recently allowed the return to her passion of portraiture painting.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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TODD FULLER Lives and works in Forest Lodge, NSW Parkside Crescent 2020, charcoal on paper, hand-drawn animation $650 Sitters: Ann Thomas, Kahla Preston, Paul Smith, Richard Lee, Faye Fuller, Todd Fuller 2020 was a year of extremes with society returning to their homes in the interest of community safety. This piece comprises a series of vignettes shot during the Covid-19 pandemic, from airing out the apartment to dancing in the kitchen after moving in with a loved one. These silhouettes capture not only those close to me but mark a strange moment in history.

For ten years,Todd Fuller has been crafting hand-drawn animations that grapple with love, loss, place, identity and community. Often narrative, these award-winning works are derived from Fullerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experiences with different communities, sites and histories. Underpinning all aspects of his practice is a love of drawing and a belief in its power as a democratic medium. A National Art School graduate, Fuller was a finalist in the 2019 Sulman Prize, and won the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award in 2018. He has exhibited throughout Australia and internationally, and has completed numerous residencies, including at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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SHIRLEY GIBSON Lives and works in Lismore, NSW Self Portrait 2020, embroidery NFS Sitter: Shirley Gibson Shirley chose to do a portrait of herself as part of a craft group activity at her REDinc day program. Being a newcomer to the arts and craft world, Shirley has shown an exceptional talent with embroidery and the challenge to capture herself in thread was only too enticing. Shirley uses very straight stitches of varying lengths which combined with instinctual colour choices creates a form in her work that is strong and solid. Shirley states that she loves embroidery as ‘It keeps her fingers working.’ Shirley’s portrait is the second embroidery she has ever done.

Shirley Gibson was born in 1960 the eldest of 6 girls. Shirley has lived in Lismore her whole life, attending Wilson Park School. After school Shirley attended Summerland Workshop and at 15 worked on her parent’s farm. Shirley came to REDinc in 2019. Since being at REDinc Shirley has discovered a passion for embroidery and other crafts. Having had no instruction at all Shirley uses colour and thread to create vibrancy and texture in her work that is purely instinctual. The Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize is Shirley’s first opportunity at entering a large Art Competition.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ANNA GLYNN Lives and works in Jaspers Brush, NSW Superimposition Colonial Selfie, I’m Extant, They’re Extinct 2020, photo-montage $6,500 Sitter: Anna Glynn During Covid-19 when contact with other people is problematic, I have chosen myself as a more than willing sitter. As a regional artist little contact with other people is the norm and my daily contact is with the birds and animals around my studio. During the 2020 lock down it seems timely that I continue to create new works from historical images bearing witness to the extinction of Australian fauna. My work Superimposition, Colonial Selfie, I’m Extant, They’re Extinct is composed of two layers: an original photographic self-portrait and submerged beneath this diaphanous image is an image of my watercolour self-portrait. In this I stand with arms raised, a supplicant. My body is infilled with my reimagined renditions of Australian colonial fauna paintings. The native animals depicted are now extinct, vanished, missing and gone forever. A portent for us?

Anna Glynn is an Australian regional artist living on the edge of the rain forest in the Shoalhaven. Nature, history, ecology and the environment are essential elements and integral to her work. Her practice is driven by curiosity and a desire to learn and understand more about the connection between land and place, humans and nature, culture and ecology, the physical and the ephemeral. Anna’s art-practice embraces an ongoing engagement with Australian and international historical and ecologically themed projects with numerous interdisciplinary art and science collaborations including recent exhibitions and artist in residencies in Australia, USA, Sweden, Ireland and Estonia.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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AMALA GROOM Lives and works in West Bathurst, NSW The Visibility of Blackness 2018, video (duration: 1:30 mins) $11,350 Sitter: Amala Groom The Visibility of Blackness, 2018, is a performative portrait of the self in the remembering of BE-ing; of the past, present and future. Narrated through generations of the artist’s matrilineal family, those that have come before and those that will come after, this work demonstrates the oneness of the Aboriginal experience across the indivisibility of time. In iterating an existing singlechannel work, The Invisibility of Blackness, 2014, where the artist moved from the present into the past, now across two channels is in unison incanting on the left; the future moves into the present moving into the past and on the right; the past moves into the present moving into the future. The progression across this iteration not only manifests in uniting the western linear notions of time with the Aboriginal aspect of its indivisibility, for the artist this is personal; a reflection upon ‘growing up’, of maturing into her cultural remembering. Moving from the desire to have her external sovereignty recognised by the Colonial Project to embody the knowingness that her self-sovereignty matters most.

Amala Groom is a Wiradyuri conceptual artist whose practice, as the performance of her cultural sovereignty, is informed and driven by First Nations epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. Her work, a form of passionate activism, presents acute and incisive commentary on contemporary socio-political issues. In 2020 Groom won the Wyndham Art Prize with Copywrong and in 2019 The Union was the first Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander work to be acquired by the Deutsche Bank Collection. Groom’s work is held in private national and international collections and institutional collections including Artbank, Blacktown City Art Collection and Casula Powerhouse Art Centre.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MICHÈLE HEIBEL Lives and works in Lovedale, NSW Appropriate Places to Cry 2019, etching needle on clayboard black $450 Sitter: Michèle Heibel I created this self-portrait just after having been diagnosed with PTSD and at a point where I was not yet ready to transform feelings into words. I ended up overwhelmed by the response I received, in particular from women: ‘Oh I feel this ‘’I cry in the car all the time’’ ‘All of mine.’ This left me with a deep feeling of affection for those who carry their burdens so quietly, so very politely. And I came to realise that in my loneliest moments, I had actually been part of a great collective grieving, a shared sadness. I found this incredibly comforting.

Born in 1972, Michèle Heibel grew up in the Swiss countryside, later immigrating to Australia with her family. She attained a Diploma of Graphic Design at North Sydney’s Billy Blue College in 1990 and found herself working in the magazine industry for the following two decades. Present day, Michèle lives in the Hunter Valley Wine Country - the environment she credits with finding her way back to creating artworks by hand. Michèle has been a finalist in many awards, some of these being The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, The Manning Art Prize, The Gosford Art Prize, The Fleurieu Biennale and most recently, the Marie Ellis OAM Drawing Award and Lyn McRae Memorial Drawing Award. 28

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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HILARY HERRMANN Lives and works in Bangalow, NSW Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s supposed to be Me 2020, oil on canvas $3,740 Sitter: Hilary Herrmann? Self This portrait has been elusive. As I painted and then painted, it moved away from resemblance, and becomes more about paint, the paint, contains more than its subject. I see other faces under the surface, including my father, now long dead. This painting has been on my easel on and off all year. There are 50 layers, 50 different paintings. In the end itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about resolve and aesthetic, and not about me.

Hilary Herrmann lives on a rural property in the hinterland of Byron Bay, surrounded by beautiful countryside. There is a network of community and friends, who are a wonderful mixture of miscreants and misfits. Her daughter reminds her of a character out of a Gabrielle Garcia Marquez novel. Hilary often feels the need to stop her daughter from floating into the skies. There is a Brahman bull, Angus cattle, neurotic dogs, bad tempered ducks, a forgotten garden, a sad and lonely chook yard, one too many battles with the crafty foxes. All on the to do list. She likes to paint on the verandah, after stepping over the cobwebs and chewed up dog bones, looking out at this curious world. 29

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MARTYN HODGE Lives and works in Bardon, QLD Bro 2020, oil on linen $4,000 Sitter: Samuel Hodge This is a portrait of my older brother, the artist Samuel Hodge. Samuel is often visited by two rainbow lorikeets in his apartment in inner city Sydney every morning. My brother has told me he often posts these visits on social media with the sole purpose of trying to make his friends and family far away jealous, and that he hopes that through witnessing the strange beauty of the parrots coming to his home, he might somehow also lure us to visit him. Rainbow Lorikeets also visit my home in Brisbane and though they are obviously not the same, I nonetheless feel I am seeing my brother in spirit. Having grown up on a small farm on Ngarabal land (in the socalled Northern Tablelands of NSW), both my brother and I have a deep connection and love of the landscape and the native animals and plants which we were raised alongside. This painting attempts to somewhat express the psychic chord that nature plays in our relationship and how it acts as a conduit that keeps us connected.

Martyn Hodge, b 1985, Ngarabal land (Glen Innes, NSW), is a Brisbane based painter. His work is centred around a caring approach of his subjects and their personal connections. Most recently this has come to include a subject’s connection to plants and animals. Through this methodology, Hodge avoids anthropomorphism to instead explore notions of how one’s connection to nature becomes an emotional and psychic representation of the subject. Hodge’s portraits often organically emerge as collage, taking in live sittings, images and memories in order to create multi layered points of access for the viewer to explore and unravel.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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NICOLE KELLY Lives and works in Sydney, NSW Shared Spaces 2019, oil on polyester $5,800 Sitter: Nicky Ginsberg and Nicole Kelly An ongoing exploration in my work is the representation of women in the genre of figure painting. The portrait of two friends, Shared Spaces orbits ideas of the body, the gaze and identity. Shared Spaces considers the existential and experiential power of interiority. The domestic bedroom/bathroom setting is a stage to explore the gap that exists between our interior selves and our intimate relationships with others. By anchoring myself within the scene I am interested in subverting the passive female body and asserting these unclothed women as subject. Heightened and often invented colour is used to explore emotion and posit human identity as manifold, resistant to definitions and a fixed identity. In many areas in the paintings, a soft purple ground breaks through the open brush marks. This technique is used to represent rupture between the internal and external realities, that which is within us, and that which is without.

Nicole Kelly holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the National Art School, Sydney. She was recently awarded the Australian Postgraduate Award and is studying for a Master of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Sydney. She has held 10 solo exhibitions in Australia and has been included in group exhibitions in France and Spain. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship and in 2018 the Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize. She has been a finalist in many of Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most prestigious awards. Her work is held in collections in Spain, UK, Australia and France. Kelly has undertaken residencies in France and Spain and has completed major public commissions for the Sutherland and St George Hospitals in Sydney.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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SADAMI KONCHI Lives and works in North Parramatta, NSW Publisher Helen Chamberlin 2019, watercolour, pencil, graphite on paper $3,000 Sitter: Ms Helen Chamberlin The work shows highly respected Publisher Helen Chamberlin is looking beyond, exploring literature and challenging life in her old age. I admire her enthusiasm to aspire to quality work. When I suddenly got a disability in my leg 14 years ago, Helen’s beautifully edited work has given me hope and the dream to illustrate picture books at the bottom of life. Today, I’ve become a successful artist. Helen is my mentor. I’m making my dreams come true. So, I always create her portraits to depict Helen’s personality with my special thanks and want particularly, people with disability to have hope and dream!

Award winning fine artist, enthusiastic children’s picture book illustrator, portraitist and event/conference sketcher, working with sociolinguists, Sydney based. Greatest strength: “Empathic portraits”. 2021 May Gibbs Fellow. 2020 Tokyo ParaART winner, Drummoyne Art Prize finalist. 2019 Australia Council Arts Grant recipient. 2018 Picturebook, My Dog Socks CBCA Notable. 2017,12 Doug Moran Semifinalist. 2017 Intercultural Communication, front cover, Edinburgh University Press. 2016 Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice, front cover, Oxford University Press. 2015 Accessible Arts NSW Quick Response Grants Recipient, and so ons. 32

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ELENA LARKIN Lives and works in Cottles Bridge, VIC In the tub at Huonbrook 2020, gouache on paper $1,000 Sitter: Tyler Arnold Painting from life, I enjoy feeling how the atmosphere of a place or situation influences my work. My partner Tyler loves baths and is happy to recline in the tub while I paint him. With the rainforest tapping against the window, Tyler listens to the piano of Nils Frahm and has the occasional sip of cold water. Playing with the interaction and contrast between the soft shapes of the human form and the strong geometrical lines of the bathroom, I sought to capture the intimacy of the nude in the private space of the bathroom.

Elena Larkin grew up on Bundjalung land, in the Northern Rivers of NSW. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Dunmoochin Foundation, Cottles Bridge in Victoria. Inspired by the sensorial experience of painting outside and from life, she loves how painting offers a way to engage with the land and others. Her work has been selected as a finalist in the SBS Landscape Prize 2020, John Villiers Outback Art Prize 2019, Naked & Nude Art Prize 2019 and Lloyd Rees Youth Memorial Art Award 2019. 33

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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SUSAN MA Lives and works in West Pennant Hills, NSW Determination 2019, oil on canvas $2,670 Sitter: Ron Ramsey Ron Ramsey is the Executive Director of Art Gallery Society NSW. His wealth of experience in art museums across three decades includes three years at the National Gallery of Victoria, fourteen years at the National Gallery of Australia and seven years as Director of the Newcastle Art Gallery. Ron was also Australia’s Cultural Attaché at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC from 2004 to 2007. I am an AG society member, AG Foundation Benefactor and a volunteer guide who conducts tours regularly. I admire Ron’s calm and intellectual appearance and I also respect his dedication to the AGS. This portrait required two sittings for me to sketch him and take photographs for reference. Throughout the sitting process Ron presented himself as a very understanding person and I felt comfortable and settled down to apply myself to the task. Ron sits in a determined way with an authoritative countenance. His focus on a complex decision coming together in a singular moment with an optimistic conclusion. This is well-expressed and emphasized by the presence of his left fist!

Susan Ma, a retired registered nurse, has taken up life drawing and portrait painting classes and workshops in Julian Ashton & NAS. She has practised Chinese painting and calligraphy previously. MA’s portraits show extra attention to faces and hands, also light and form aiming at realist portrayals. Multiple layers are used to build up tones and to sculpt a tighter form. She has been selected as finalist and semi-finalist in Portia Geach, Doug Moran and Lismore Hurford Hardwood. Ma is a member of the Art Gallery Society NSW, a Foundation Benefactor and a volunteer guide in Art Gallery NSW. 34

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ALI MARSHALL Lives and works in Indooroopilly, QLD Underwater Dreamer 2020, oil on canvas NFS Sitter: Dr Ian Tibbetts This is a portrait of Dr Ian Tibbetts. I have known Ian for over 30 years and it has always been clear that his great passion in life is the ocean and marine life. Ian works as a Professor at the University of Queensland in the School of Marine Science. For many years he has also run the marine research stations on both Heron and North Stradbroke Islands. He spends much of each year visiting and speaking at various universities around the world and has published work concerning protection of fragile marine ecosystems, particularly the Great Barrier Reef. Ian has a large personality and loves to make people laugh. He is a popular lecturer and people are drawn to his playful nature. I have tried to express the duality within Ianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life; on the one hand, the serious academic and on the other, someone who just wants to go diving and snorkelling! I have included a good dose of his sense of humour as I have presented himâ&#x20AC;Ś perhaps in a daydream. I hope this painting conveys the sense of joy and passion that he has for the marine world and his determination to protect it through his work.

Ali Marshall is a Brisbane artist working predominately as a figurative and landscape painter. After studying at Brisbane QUT, she worked for many years as a Secondary Art Teacher in various Queensland schools. She has since attended the Brisbane Institute of Art and exhibited in many group exhibitions. She was recently selected as a finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize and a Semi-Finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. 35

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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SAMUEL MASSEY Lives and works in Lara, VIC The Plight 2020, oil on aluminium $800 Sitter: Guy Maestri Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m quite interested in the materiality of paint and I have long been enticed by the macabre. Needless to say, I was immediately drawn to Guy Maestriâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings of roadkill. As I became more familiar with his work I saw my own interests reflected again and again. I also find the inquisitive nature of his practice admirable. He seems to be constantly driven to engage in new frontiers of his practice, always refining and expanding. In my portrait of Guy, I have focused on my initial connection with his work, materiality and the macabre.

Samuel Massey is an award-winning artist who completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at the National Art School, Sydney in 2015. His work engages with the tension between imagery and paint application which is explored through the genres of portraiture, still life and narrative painting. His works have been included in group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Massey currently works from his home studio in Lara.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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SHANNON MCCULLOCH Lives and works in Brunswick, VIC Reclining Nude (self portrait) 2020, oil on board $2,000 Sitter: Shannon McCulloch Reclining Nude is a self-portrait painted from a photograph taken on my smart phone, of my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe doors of an air BNB. Within my practice I am interested in how screen-based technology is influencing the way we see the world and ourselves. Painting allows me to reconstruct the image in a way that is more compelling than the digital source, whilst opening up a dialogue with the history of painting. The reclining nude has been a popular subject in painting since the 14th century. The figures in these paintings were almost always women painted by men for men, serving the male gaze through objectifying the subject. Given this history I chose to paint myself as the reclining nude, inhabiting the space as both subject and object and artist. In this painting I am seen looking at the screen of my phone revealing that both the subject and viewer are looking at the same image in that moment.

Shannon McCulloch (1995) is an artist working in Melbourne. McCulloch completed a BFA at Curtin university in 2016. Since then he has had 6 solo and two person shows in Perth and Melbourne. McCulloch uses painting, print, drawing and performance to explore ideas relating to image and information saturation in screen based media, the construction of personal and cultural narratives and the semiotics of power.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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GENEVIEVE MEMORY Lives and works in Brisbane, QLD No judging (me and my curlew gang) 2020, oil on linen $2,670 Sitter: Genevieve Memory This self-portrait was painted in isolation during the Covid-19 shutdown period and has many personal resonances. This painting is about looking, seeing, and not seeing. There are seven literal and five metaphorical eyes staring out at the viewer. The work is a meditation on the human tendency to judge others by what we can see rather than what we can learn about the person – the painting’s title refers to the colloquial expression ‘no judging’, which paradoxically can often be accompanied by a judgement. In something of a departure from my usual approach, it is a tribute to the humble bush stone curlew, the native Australian bird with which I feel a curiously strong affinity. Curlews are birds of camouflage – during the day people often walk right by them, not even noticing them. But they are there. It is a comingof-age portrait – I was 50 at the time of the sitting. As I journeyed through the painting, I came to better accept all my wrinkles, sags and imperfections. And as is usual with my portraiture, there is an art-historical reference – this time to one of my favourite self-portraits, Albrecht Durer’s beguiling Self-portrait at Twenty-Eight (1500). Genevieve Memory is a Brisbane/Meanjin-based interdisciplinary visual artist, arts writer, curator and composer. Her art practice is centred around portraiture and self-portraiture, her overarching themes being identity and the mind. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) with Distinction from Griffith University and is represented by the Australian Music Centre. Genevieve has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Queensland and Victoria and has been a finalist in the Redland Art Awards (contemporary painting prize). She is looking forward to a residency with the Tweed Regional Gallery and a show in Hobart’s Salamanca Arts Centre next year. 38

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ZILPHA MENGHETTI Lives and works in East Lismore, NSW Mbatha 2020, acrylic collage on canvas NFS Sitter: Mbatha Nguta Mbatha Nguta is an artist with a disability who has created art at the REDinc studio for 16 years. Expressing himself through a method of manipulating paint in a sensory manner to create expressionistic abstract work, bold with layer upon layer of acrylic colour. Through this process the paint has built up across the floor, tables and easels creating the perfect medium for which to do a portrait of him. A medium unconsciously created by him and other artists over the years. The paint was chipped and picked from the surfaces by Mbatha and his support workers, a process which Mbatha loves to do. The magic of a silhouette profile has always bewildered me as to its ability to readily capture a person, undeniably in the most simple way. The definition of line and block colour clearly captures and identifies a person once the brain registers who it is. The side profile being an almost absolute physical portrait. Using the paint medium simply adds to the overall context of this portrait of Mbatha Nguta as his artistic essence is embedded within it.

Zilpha Menghetti is a 47 year-old mother of two who resides in Lismore. Originally from Norfolk Island she is an arts and crafts enthusiast but would not describe herself as an artist. She has always been a creative person and curious about many mediums. She dabbles during periods of exhaustible enthusiasm only to come to a screaming halt when the inspiration is suddenly dissolved. She works in a field where she facilitates and explores artistic expression with people with disabilities and finds ways for them to contribute their art to the wider community.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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LIBBY MOORE Lives and works in Beecroft NSW Can you hear me? 2020, acrylic on canvas $1,600 Sitter: Libby Moore Painted in between trips from Sydney to clear out my mum’s house on the mid north coast, this self-portrait reveals the weight of so many memories. I have felt like I was in a whirlpool of emotions, wanting to get the job of packing up her precious possessions done whilst really only wanting to preserve the house and its contents just the way she’d left it. I found myself walking into the rooms in her house asking, ‘Where are you? Can you hear me?’, wanting to find her younger and fitter, the way she was when we’d descend on her with all the children for weeks during school holidays. In this scene I’ve positioned myself on the wall in my mum’s front hallway before we started to dismantle every room she had so exquisitely appointed. On any given evening my mum would have many decorative lamps lit creating a beautiful and inviting atmosphere. Depicted is the scene that greeted everyone entering her home with the Margaret Preston glasses case from AGNSW that I’d given her many years ago, still sitting where she’d left it. This is part of the scene I never want to forget. August 2020

Artist Libby Moore lives in leafy north-west Sydney surrounded by an abundance of lush, colourful subject matter. She discovered the delights of acrylic paint when her children were small and it is now her preferred medium as it partners well with her idiosyncratic semi-surrealistic style and the somewhat personal subject matter incorporated into her still lifes. Libby is attracted to unconventionally beautiful ornaments with strong familial associations and loves receiving commissions for both native flora and introduced species. In 2020 Libby has been a finalist in the Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award, the Waverly Art Prize, in a group exhibition at The Corner Store Gallery and has also been selected for the Basil Sellers Art Prize in October.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ANH NGUYEN Lives and works in Thirroul, NSW Night portrait with hat 2020, acrylic on paper, mounted on board with resin layer $1,200 Sitter: Anh Nguyen Night portrait with hat is a self-portrait, a continued exercise in observational painting and engagement with myself and life around me, and an interest in the infinite configurations of facial expression and gesture. I made the resin layer to create an effect of ‘looking through’, or maybe even ‘looking back’, as like a reflection. I am also interested in finding that space between perceptual painting and something more abstract.

Anh Nguyen was born in Melbourne and now lives and paints from the NSW South Coast, with her partner and 4 children. She was recently awarded the Lyn McCrea Memorial Drawing Prize 2020, and has been a finalist in other well-regarded prizes such as the Kilgour (honourable mention for 2020), the John Leslie Art Prize, the Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize and the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award. In 2018, she was also the recipient of the Basil Sellers Art Prize

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ANTOINETTE O’BRIEN Lives and works in Lismore, NSW WINNER Lacuna 2020, ceramic $3,400 2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Sitter: Helen Deravenchecko This is a portrait imbued with my love and appreciation for Helen Deravencheko. I am indebted to Helen in many ways. My mother was unwell and incapacitated all my life and Helen helped by washing clothes, ironing and cleaning, but more importantly for me, she sat and drank tea with Mum and me. Drinking tea and chatting with them both was nurturing and formative. Helen was quietly present, but remains loud and vibrant in my memory. In this work Helen sits upon the Blue Hole, a support which references a connection between geological deep time and mined memory. The Blue Hole is a seascape in which my brother and I swam 40 metres below the surface, drifting around an ancient stalagnate. Love, Helen, and the infinite depths of the Blue Hole are linked in my memory and find their expression in this portrait.

Antoinette O’Brien’s work is both introspective and subversive. It sits at the crossroads of a garden meditation and the chaos of riot. The works Antoinette constructs reflect society and the community to which she is inextricably bound. Antoinette has expressed herself in various media during her career including printmaking, performance, painting and installation. However, she always returns to clay which is the means by which she grounds herself. Antoinette lives in Lismore NSW on unceded Bundjalung land, where she raises her two sons and runs Basso Studio. 42

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ARION OCEAN Lives and works in Wilsons Creek, NSW Uncle Jack Gold 2019, pencil, car paint, acrylics, gold foil $6,670 Sitter: Jack Charles I have chosen Jack Charles, of the Djadjawurrung People from the Murray River, as my sitter. He combines the look of a crazed scientist and a gentle human being, caught in the eye of the storm of life, forging his way as an actor, storyteller, addict, thief and humanitarian. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve chosen him because of his enormous heart, his honesty, and as an Aboriginal elder who shows the marks of age and triumph over the human condition. His eyes reveal his generosity; incorruptible, real, undefinable. This portrait shows the overlapping layers of his life. Behind him are the dark colours of his past. His clothes infused with colour represent his relationship to fellow human beings, acting on the Stage of Life. Dominating, is his white shock of hair, the Angelic that has guided his path. And in the centre is his golden face showing the strength derived from pain and hardship, alongside the joy, beauty and compassion he embodies. I chose Jack Charles because I wanted to capture on canvas the authenticity of this exceptional Aboriginal man bridging the old ways to a modern culture with beauty and compassion. Arion Oceanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interests are diverse but predominantly he is an eco-sustainable architect, artist, visionary, deep ecologist, photographer, surfer and adoring father. His primary interest is in giving back to the earth in tangible ways through conscious design, artistic expression and service to the planet and humanity. He thrives on immersion in nature, penetrating and finding expression through the veils of consciousness as a spiritual continuity written across all landscapes. His art serves to disclose our soulful origins as a transparency within life, deepening our understanding of the potency and marvellous array of natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gifts to us held in delicate balance.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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JESSICA O’CONNOR Lives and works in Surrey Hills, NSW The meeting 2019, digital photograph on paper $2,670 Sitter: Fiona Fell I worked alongside Fiona Fell for many years and what stayed with me were the quiet moments of creation, the fleeting and private revelations when she met her work for the first time. This image was one of those many happenings. My intention with this piece was to invite the viewer into the mind of the artist and to consider what they are grappling with. To see the interconnection of maker and made. To consider where one ends and the other begins. I am drawn to stories that combine both the gentle side of the artist at work while they are confronting the truth, if not the hard yards of constructing, deconstructing, and then letting go. This work captures a history or might I say, (her)story, and a semblance of future. It represents stories told and those that will be told. It is the amalgamation of meetings and farewells. Essentially, the witnessing of artist, art and person becoming one and separating at the same time.

Sydney based artist, Jessica O’Connor, is a sculptor and photographer whose work focuses on the unspoken and coded interactions between person and world. She has spent the past few years working with multiple artists and galleries learning all that she can. Living in Sydney, she has settled into her practice once again and is showing on a regular basis with Rogue Gallery in Redfern. O’Connor is an emerging artist who has exhibited at Lismore Regional Gallery, Southern Cross University, Artstate Lismore, University of Barcelona, Byron School of Art and Murwillumbah Art Trail. 44

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MIRIAM Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;GRADY Lives and works in Rous Mill, NSW Aunt Dorrie 2020, oil on canvas NFS Sitter: Aunty Dorothy Gordon I painted the late Aunt Dorrie Gordon because I want our local community to know who she is. As a teacher of young local Aboriginal children, I have been privileged to work alongside some of our Elders and Knowledge Holders, while they shared their stories, art, language, culture and knowledge with my class. Meeting them through the eyes of children, with their honest inquiry and open intrigue, afforded me a unique insight into these people, so central to Widjabul Wyabul Country, Bundjalung Nation (Lismore and surrounds). One of these is our magnificent Aunty Dorrie, a bridge between cultures. She was a strong proud woman of action: the first ordained woman in the Uniting Church in Australia and first Aboriginal woman chaplain in the NSW prison system. Here locally, she gave endlessly and is much loved. Her strong, gentle, humble way, making a difference, advocating with no judgment or anger.

On completing a Diploma of Education at Kuring-Gai CAE, majoring in Fine Art, Miriam Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Grady taught in Bourke NSW. This experience underpinned a deep respect for the local Aboriginal people, their community and culture, and a love for the raw outback landscape and desert hues. Moving to teach in the Northern Rivers Miriam has started her journey of coming to know the Widjabul Wyabul Country, Bundjalung Nation, learning from the local Elders, Knowledge Keepers, families and young jarjums (children). It has been through her strong connection to this country and its community, that Miriam has stories she wants to tell through her artwork.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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TRAVIS PATERSON Lives and works in Mullumbimby, NSW The hideaway 2020, Lambda print on paper $1,200 Sitter: Anonymous This candid portrait of my lover was taken in May this year shortly after I had separated from my partner of over 20 years and as the world descended into uncertainty and fear. The hideaway refers to my new home (the first I had ever lived in by myself) and also refers to the person seated on the edge of my bed, unnamed and partially obscured. This photograph was taken as I entered the room. That moment was a pause and reprieve in the chaos around me, an intimate silence in which I was able to transcend the dread and confusion of the world outside. The hideaway exists between portrait and self-portrait. Although another is pictured, it is also a representation of myself, my existence and experience in this time and place. The expanded scene (his pose similar to my own as I entered the room) is reminiscent of the reversed reflection in RenĂŠ Magritteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Not to be reproduced, a work that acknowledges the ambiguity, limitations and narrative possibilities of portraiture. In The hideaway the lens becomes the apparatus of

Travis Paterson is an artist and educator based in Northern NSW whose work encompasses both traditional and digital printmaking. His work primarily addresses ideas of identity, memory and queer histories. Upon graduating from Southern Cross University, he was awarded the Kaske Fellowship enabling him to co-curate a touring exhibition of Australian printmakers that was shown in Bristol, UK, as part of the renowned international IMPACT conference. In 2013 he won the Ursula Hoff Institute prize for his finalist entry in the prestigious Geelong Acquisitive Print Award. In 2017 he was a finalist in the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ANA POLLAK Lives and works in Dangar Island, NSW r 2020, oil on perspex filmed on digital media $270 Sitter: Royden Irvine It’s been a long held wish of mine to create an abstracted and energetic hand drawn animated portrait. r is a portrait of a friend whom I have witnessed in many moods. In this portrait I wanted to convey a world weariness moment in his life with a dense writhing mass of line. The challenge was how to generate and maintain the momentum needed for gestural and spontaneous drawing while following a meticulous process of minimal transitions between each drawing. After much experimentation a simple process using basic materials and hand-made tools evolved. All the drawings were made by hand and free of any device. A video monitor was used for referencing the portrait. The film was carried out in the Gingerbread Man suites. The editors, Craig Deeker and Walter Radcliffe helped to expand the aesthetic possibilities of r with their technical assistance. The sound artist Michael Harding created a deep resonant soundscape that intensifies the emotional pull of the film.

Ana Pollak lives and works on Dangar Island on the Hawkesbury River. She began her art studies in London in 1976, continuing in Sydney from 1978 to 1980. Her involvement with film began in 1980. Since then she has been involved with art programs for blind children, community art projects and environmental campaigns. In 2007 Pollak was awarded the Dobell Prize for Drawing. Following this she returned to animation to produce “Flux” and now her latest film “r”.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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JAMIE PREISZ Lives and works in Elizabeth Bay, NSW Intimate Inconsolable Impiety 2020, oil on canvas $12,000 Sitter: Warren Ellis It was a profound experience and task to humanise one of my idols through portraiture (alternatively ‘through the medium of paint’. Warren Ellis and his band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ music has been a respite for me and a vehicle through which to escape. When I was presented with the opportunity to paint his portrait, I looked to Caravaggio’s theatrical depiction of Catholic Saints for a commissioned religious altarpiece. His unorthodox interpretations of the biblical figure was rejected for its ‘realism’ and ‘likeness’ to humanity and similarly I wanted this portrait to enshrine Ellis’ musical impact on me, but to also convey his thoughtful and endearing nature. A nod to Caravaggio can be seen through the use of gold leaf to frame the circular canvas and the trademark chiaroscuro style. Classical romanticism is also referenced through Ellis’ choice of pose and the inclusion of his violin. I tried to depict Ellis in a moment of impious solitude, a saint without the religion bit.

Jamie Preisz is an Australian artist whose work focusses on modern vanitas and romanticism in painting, narratives of human experience and consumption. Born in 1990 he works across portraiture, videography and painting. Jamie uses a classical style of oil painting to depict scenes and still lifes in a contemporary context. Selected exhibitions include, 2016 Yalkuna Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney, 2014 Sleep alone Espace quinzequinze, Paris, France, 2019 Soft Machine Jerico Contemporary Woolloomooloo, 2019 Sydney Contemporary Booth C07 Carriage Works. Jamie’s work is included in numerous collections including the Cowra Regional Gallery and the City of Sydney. He currently lives and works From Sydney Australia.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MARIAN QUIGLEY Lives and works in Cowes, VIC The Queen of Biographers: Professor Jenny Hocking 2018, acrylic on linen $2,140 Sitter: Professor Jenny Hocking Professor Jenny Hocking is a former university colleague; an award-winning biographer; Emeritus Professor at Monash University and the inaugural Distinguished Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute, Western Sydney University. She is the author of a twovolume biography of Gough Whitlam (2008 & 2012) and winner of the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Barbara Ramsden Award. At the time I began this portrait, she was appealing against the Federal Court decision not to release the ‘Palace Letters’: the correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, at the time of the 1975 Whitlam dismissal. She recently won this appeal. My work is characterised by hard edge, minimalist abstraction and vibrant colour. In this portrait, the motifs of Old Parliament House and the Labor campaign badge signify both the Whitlam era and Jenny’s recent successful campaign for the release of the Palace Letters. The title of the work alludes to Gough Whitlam’s description of Professor Hocking as the

After leaving a career as a secondary art teacher, Maria Quigley gained a doctorate in English and lectured in Media and Communications at Monash University. Following retirement, she rediscovered her love of painting and began exhibiting in 2009. After winning a number of awards in Gippsland exhibitions, she began entering national award exhibitions. She has been a finalist in the Portia Geach Memorial Award (2017), the ANL Maritime Award (2015, 2017, 2018, 2019) and the SBS Portrait Prize (2019). She has exhibited in Melbourne galleries including Brunswick Street Gallery; Quadrant Gallery and Cambridge Studio Gallery. 49

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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CAITLIN REILLY Lives and works in Byron Bay, NSW Hillary 2019, oil on linen $2,000 Sitter: Hillary Herrmann This painting is my attempt to capture the presence of Hillary Herrmann a local Bangalow identity and contemporary female Australian artist. It is my wish that her spirit is reflected in this portrait to provide an example of a life well lived and a woman who inspires true creative expression. My hope is that it will provide such encouragement to the viewer as well. Aligned with the illusionary quality inherent to the sitter’s own works, the subject’s staging is a reference to the reverence in which I hold her. Through the pallet I want to express a richness in the application of paint, a characteristic I believe the subject exudes. The gaze and grin are an expression of Hillary’s playful nature in addition to her intrinsic sincerity. Shadowing my process is the unavoidable duality that exists in being a female artist in Australia today. Namely, to represent the world as I see it through an aesthetic means, while asking that we as woman be considered as more than what is on the surface. To look deeper is both a function of my role as artist and an expression of my deepest values. Caitlin Reilly is an Australian multi-disciplinary artist living on Bundjalung country in Byron Bay. Caitlin has participated in many solo and group exhibitions in China and Australia. Her arts practice involves working in a broad range of media creating layering and textural history, with an extensive body of work exploring the development of surface rendering. Her work is represented in collections throughout Australia, Europe, America, and China.“My work is an expression of my love for the area in which I live. It is the intention that this feeling comes to life through my painting, sculpture and drawings. In the last decade my understanding of home has been shared between Shanghai, China 2009-15 and Byron Bay, Australia 2015-20.”

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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GWEN ROBSON Lives and works in Sunshine Beach, QLD Winter Portrait 2020, oil on canvas NFS Sitter: Gwen Robson Winter Portrait is a self-portrait painted directly from life and was completed over several weekend sessions. My bathroom became my makeshift studio. It was cramped. I propped my canvas on the vanity benchtop and it lent against the mirror. I had to hold my position in the tight space of the mirrorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reflection and this awkwardness is captured in the painting. I had no preconceived outcome for this portrait. I chose colours intuitively and was guided by the process to create a satisfactory representation of myself. I did not set out to capture a deliberate mood. Self-portraits allow me to be surprised by the outcome. It is only when I am finished painting that I can see something more of me.

Gwen Robson has a multidisciplinary arts practice, encompassing drawing, painting and sculpture. She holds a qualification in graphic design and has studied fine art with many practicing artists at various institutions around Australia. She has been a finalist in the Moreton Bay Art Awards (2019, 2014), The Mosman Art Prize (2018), The Ravenswood Australian Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Prize (2020, 2019), and was a semifinalist in the inaugural Darling Portrait Prize 2020

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MATTHEW SANSOM Lives and works in Byron Bay, NSW Fashioned from clay - Julia Motoomull 2020, acrylic and clay paint $1,600 Sitter: Julia Motoomull I first met Julia when she replied to an ad I placed looking for an art model. I had just intended to spend a few hours in the studio drawing. She held a gaze of determination right from the beginning, her enigmatic presence left me with questions needing answers. Over numerous sittings, conversations, beach walks and pizza, I made a new friend and got to learn a few things about Julia Motoomull. Born in the Philippines, her mother is Indian and her father is Filipino, the Northern Rivers is now her home. She works in childhood education and has a vision to start a Montezuma education center here. She enjoys yoga, spirituality and philosophies and is interested in indigenous culture, birds and native botanicals. She also has a passion for surfing and the ocean. Meeting Julia reminded me that we are like a vessel, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;fashioned from clayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the surface is both practical and beautiful but what we fill ourselves with is what makes life interesting.

Sansom expresses a range of themes with drawing, printmaking and painting. After studying Art and Design at TAFE Geelong (1993), he became involved with theater, music and art making. He worked on set and costume design for the Chandrabhanu dance Academy of Indian arts (assistant to Geoffrey Goldie. Melbourne. 2019-2000). After 3 years living in the UK he returned to Australia (2004) to develop an art and design portfolio. Currently located in the Northern Rivers of NSW. Recent projects include landscapes painting, print designs for silkscreen and lino-cut, still life and figurite painting. Sansom has exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions, local and internationally, and he has garnered a string of awards along the way.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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LYNN SAVERY Lives and works in Kew East, VIC Death Inspires me like a Dog Inspires a Rabbit 2020, oil on canvas NFS Sitter: Lynn Savery Being faced by death is the ultimate motivation to make something of your life, to step beyond the confines of your habitual way of thinking, to accept new challenges and explore the world in new ways. This self-portrait is a reflection on what is and what might be.

Lynn Savery was born in Brighton, England in 1960 and moved to Australia in 1975. Currently living in Melbourne, she holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and a Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations. In 2017, she decided it was time to devote herself to a passion she had long neglected, painting, and made a self-portrait which she entered into the 2018 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and won. Since then, she has been finalist in the Portia Geach Memorial Award, the Lester Prize, the Percival Portrait Painting Prize and the Kilgour Prize for Figurative and Portrait Painting. 53

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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LORIBELLE SPIROVSKI Lives and works in Newtown, NSW Alone, Together 2020, oil on linen $26,000 Sitters: Simon Tedeschi and Loribelle Spirovski My husband and I have always worked from home. There has been a piano in every place that he has ever inhabited, while over the years I have worked my way up from bedroom-studio, to living-room-studio, to a permanent home studio. As introverts, this has always been the norm for us, but with the world brought to its knees by a global pandemic, our isolation has become more acute, while the world increasingly resembles the interior lives that we have always called home. This portrait is the first time I have painted myself in a long while. It is an unvarnished reflection of who we are at this moment in time. Alone, together.

Loribelle Spirovski was born in 1990 to a Filipino mother and a Yugoslav father. She lives and works in Sydney Australia. Loribelle graduated in 2012 from the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales with a Bachelor of Art Education. She has since exhibited in Australia, Europe, the UK and the United States with works collected all around the world and has developed a reputation as a highly soughtafter young artist on the international scene. She is a threetime finalist in the Archibald Prize.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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FLEUR STEVENSON Lives and works in Rozelle, NSW Self portrait with earpods 2020, acrylic + spray paint on board $3,850 Sitter: Fleur Stevenson After spending the past three years exploring my visual language by abstracting the landscapes I sit and paint in, I saw this as a lovely (yet challenging) opportunity to do a painting of self-reflection drawing from my experience and practice, as an emerging artist. I am seated in my studio chair, wearing my favourite red hoodie while facing a full-length mirror with my arm outstretched to my right to paint on the board set up against my studio wall. I paint myself initially without looking at the surface, with my paints and mixing trays at my feet. I move through the work, choosing colour intuitively, while listening to music without my entire body moving as it so often does while painting. My painting arm extends off the surface, to gesture towards a movement and connection with my painted self.

Fleur Stevenson was born in New Zealand in 1976 and in 2001 studied Visual Art at Swinburne Senior Secondary College in Melbourne. In 2017 Fleur turned her practice into a profession. She paints out of her home studio in Sydney. Working with mixed media, predominantly on board, Fleurâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings explore the negative spaces between permanent and temporary objects in nature and life, patterns and repetition, balancing and unbalancing geometric shapes and creating depth and perspective by layering spray painted stencils (created from her drawings) and acrylic paint. She explores themes of interconnectedness and a sense of place, with the aim of bringing attention and focus to areas of the environment that are often overlooked.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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LISA STONHAM Lives and works in Surry Hills, NSW Untitled Scene 2019, archival print on fine art cold pressed paper $1,030 Sitter: Kriv Stenders My photo media works are impressionistic and ephemeral documentations of the everyday. Colour driven abstractions engage with the temporal nature of physical space and light. I work predominately in the field, using existing locations with available light, often visiting multiple times. Series evolve by combining documentary opportunities with ‘staged’ or ‘re-performed’ imagery. This is a photograph of Kriv Stenders that I took on a recent family holiday to Latvia and Russia. It is taken in an unguarded moment at the Military Historical Museum of Artillery in Saint Petersburg, which we were visiting with our son. The creative process often begins with being present to the moment. In this instance, knowing the subject for over 30 years, the act of ‘taking the photograph’ was very intimate and collaborative and about so much more than what can be ‘seen’. I was drawn to the introspective tone, dramatic light and dark mood of this moment. The atmosphere is dreamlike and visceral, containing a fragile fragment of story. A possible narrative moment. The square format enhances the mirror like ambiguity, in that a certain level of projection is required from the viewer. This photograph is from the series, Untitled Scene. Lisa Stonham is a Visual Artist working across photo media, digital collage, sculpture and installation. Lisa has exhibited at the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney), the Campbelltown Arts Centre, the Perth Centre for Photography, the Korean Cultural Centre (Sydney), the Centre for Contemporary Photography (Melbourne) and the Dank Street Depot Gallery (Sydney). She has an upcoming show at M16 Artspace (Canberra) in 2021. Lisa has been a finalist in numerous art prizes including the Blake Prize, Iris Award, KAAF Art prize, Contemporary Landscape in Photography Award, the Fisher’s Ghost Award, the Head-On Photography Prize, the Ravenswood Women’s Art Prize and the Sunshine Coast Art Prize (up-coming) 56

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ROBYN SWEANEY Lives and works in Mullumbimby, NSW Warrior Woman 2019, acrylic on handmade paper $4,500 Sitter: Karla Dickens Karla Dickens is a cross-cultural Wiradjuri Irish woman who grew up in the urban and eastern suburbs of Sydney. I met Karla around 14 years ago not long after she had moved to Lismore from the Hunter Valley. Her paintings instantly captivated me with their intensity, colour and underlying potent meaning. I admire her greatly for her bravery in tackling topics that so many are afraid to and for the way she has used different media and found objects to express her ideas of her personal experience, ideas of identity, politics and darker topics of violence against women. In my small portrait of her she is wearing a cloak created from a bedspread that was made for Queen Elizabeth when she visited Lismore in 1954, where she stayed at the Gollan Hotel, on which Karla has appliquĂŠd material depicting an Australian desert scene.

Robyn has a Degree in Education, Art & Crafts, and was a secondary art teacher in Victoria before moving to Mullumbimby in 1987. Since then she has exhibited regularly and taught tertiary Fine Art and adult Education, including modules in printmaking, drawing and painting. Since 1992 Robyn has held 19 solo exhibitions and been involved in over 90 selected group exhibitions. She has been the finalist in many major national awards. In 2019 she was awarded the Trustees Watercolour prize in the Wynne Prize for landscape at the Art Gallery of NSW. In 2016 a series of her portrait paintings were exhibited in the Popular Pet Show exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Her work is held in public and private collections throughout Australia.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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JOE SWEPSON Lives and works in Lismore, NSW The Weight 2020, photographic rag with archival ink $700 Sitter: Joe Swepson This portrait is a photograph of the body as an organic system (adaptive to growth and change and renewal) against a synthetic body (fixed, unadaptive and idealised). The clash of these two bodies together has captured a moment of struggle. A binary of fact & fiction. Conventional notions of gender have been societally imposed, socially constructed, genetically and biologically determined. Today it is the ‘Self’ that initiates gender, constructed through the linguistics of pronouns, ornamentation of the body, and hormonal or surgical transformation of the body. Underlying The Weight is the notion that gender is an act, not a fact. It is a historical and social construction that must be performed in order to function and exist. This selfportrait physicalises the artist’s own lived experience of the weight of externally imposed gender, and the struggle to move out of its shadow. The figure is blurred, mirroring the experience of non-binary bodies, existing in-between the defined binary of gender construction. ‘Let me escape the confines of the gender my biology has been ascribed’.

Joe Swepson is a non-binary artist from the Northern Rivers (Ze is their preferred pronoun as it denotes neither male nor female). Their practice explores notions of gender representation and instigates discussions around gender construction and questions the politics of representation in contemporary debates about gender. These are questions they have been engaging with their entire life and it has continued to inform their work.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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FI TAYLOR Lives and works in Wellington Point, QLD Everyone deserves to be seen 2019, charcoal on paper NFS Sitter: Greg Clanahan Greg is a colourful, cheerful and engaging individual who has endured and survived many of life’s hardships. He spent almost 20 years on the streets and during this time was homeless. He found and joined The Big Issue magazine which he sells around Brisbane City. He is generous, kind, caring and full of joy and despite his life challenges he continues to be the wonderful human we see and interact with in our work-a-day lives. Greg and I had crossed paths many years ago when I was working at the Queensland Police Service and he was selling The Big Issues near Roma Street train station. We were introduced by a colleague of mine and our friendship began. After 5 years or so I moved on to other projects and we lost touch. In 2017 I started a new job and on my very first day who would be standing on the corner but Greg! We rekindled our friendship and continued to discover more about each other, share coffee and many laughs. Being the kind soul that he is, Greg generously trusted me to do his portrait for the Brisbane Portrait Prize, for which I am eternally grateful. Brisbane based artist, Fiona Taylor, has always had an interest in the aesthetic and enjoys creating. She has developed her skills through classes, workshops and entering art prizes. She is currently studying a Visual Arts program at CQU via distance education where she intends to continue her education and develop her creative skills. Most recently she was a finalist in the Inaugural Brisbane Portrait Prize (2019). “If, in my pursuit of connection to beauty and meaning, someone else is inspired or just simply smiles…that is all I need to be fulfilled by my art. I create for my own sanity…I love the richness it brings to my life and admire all the other creatives in this world!!”

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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LENNY THURGATE Lives and works in Bangalow, NSW Self Portrait 2020, oil on canvas NFS Sitter: Lenny Thurgate As a young man who skates and has an immune deficiency I have had many hospital admissions including two broken bones this year. In this work I have explored both the fragility and resilience of my body and spirit during these times. On one hand I am a pale ghostly vessel and on the other a resilient defiant and strong figure. There is an aspect of surrealism in the work to also reflect these strange times. I chose to do a selfportrait as I felt more comfortable basing the painting on my own body.

Lenny Thurgate is a young Bangalow based artist and musician whose work explores the human figure in his/her inner world. After visiting Europe and seeing great impressionist paintings, he was inspired to study the human form through the medium of oil paint and often uses the dry brush technique. As a young artist Lenny has already had a sold out exhibition and won the open prize at the Bangalow show. Lenny is attending Byron Bay High School and is currently doing his HSC in music and art.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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SEABASTION TOAST Lives and works in Tanglewood, NSW Ways of Mapping Sunshine 2020, oil on canvas $1,800 Sitter: Seabastion Toast With no one to paint during lockdown other than myself I became increasingly interested in the abstract qualities of light as a subject in itself. Coupled with extended hours for introspection, the repetitive nature of recording the same head in a mirror opened up a whole world of painterly opportunities. This painting reflects on a unique time in our history. Like a chard of light briefly passing across a form, intense but intangible.

Seabastion ToastÂ lives and works on the North Coast of NSW. Recently she won both the Hangers Award and Highly Commended at the 2019 Glover Prize. She was also the winner of the 2011 Gainsborough Greens, 2014 Darcy Doyle award and is regularly a finalist in many prominent awards including the Doug Moran, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and EMSLA awards. Her paintings are a muse on the human condition and span all genres from still life to portraiture to landscape. Toast has a degree in Fine Art from SCU and has also studied at the Pratt Institute in New York and COFA in Sydney.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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DATSUN TRAN Lives and works in Aldgate, SA Ember as Red from Pokemon during the pandemic 2020, pine ash ink on Taiwanese rice paper $2,500 Sitter: Ember Wild Tran Wood Whilst 2020 has been a year of uncertainty and shifting paradigms, my wife and I have tried to keep things as structured as possible for our daughter Ember. We go to the library, we play outside, we cook together, we tell her stories, and we teach her how to stay safe in this new world. She is still playful and unaware of the real devastation of Covid-19 ravaging the world. Classical Chinese paintings were used to tell stories; from everyday life to momentous events, mythic and real. This is a tiny slice of our story, a reminder for future years of what Ember was interested in during these historic times.

Datsun Tran is an Australian artist, his work primarily features the natural world, though it is about us, the human story. His work has explored themes of conflict and utopia, filtered through the lens of what we have in common, rather than what separates us. Tran has exhibited extensively in Australia, as well as North America, Asia and Europe. He has had over 25 solo and group shows, exhibited in over 30 art fairs, and has been a finalist in over 25 art prizes.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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EDWARD TROST Lives and works in Wardell, NSW the glance 2020, pyrography and oil paint on plywood $13,350 Sitter: Ruth Hayden This introspective portrait of Ruth Hayden was created using ‘pokerwork’, a hand drawn pyrographic technique that burns the subject’s likeness into the plywood, breaking the portrait down into a collection of tones and individual burn marks. Trost selects his subjects from people whose inner strength has given them resilience in the face of mental health challenges. He hopes that by highlighting people actively working through depression, his art will help to correct misconceptions about this debilitating illness. Trost chose this pose of Ruth as he felt it personifies her acceptance of life at that moment. Emerging from the canvas - like coming out from a dense fog - which is a term depressed people often use to describe their experience. She seems remote as if distancing herself from the audience, not looking directly at life but providing an aside glance. By not focusing on reality is how she dealt with support for a depressed partner. For the long term mentally unwell, depression can be a blurred vision of life and meaning.

Edward Trost has more than 30 years’ experience in the arts, working in a variety of media including portraits, large scale sculpture, and animated feature films. In his portraiture, Trost renders his subject’s likeness as a collection of scorched tones, utilising a pyrographic technique to create individual burn marks on plywood. Trost selects subjects who have faced mental health challenges with inner strength and resilience. By highlighting recognisable people either actively working through depression or advocating on behalf of the community, Trost hopes his art will help to correct misconceptions about this debilitating illness.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MELANIE VALENTINE Lives and works in McLeods Shoot, NSW Howard, no hugging 2020, oil on board $950 Sitter: Howard Sedgmen I met Howard through a friend who introduced us thinking we would get along like a house on fire. She wasn’t wrong. He’s now one of my closest friends. We enjoy many of the same things – art, good food and wine, making and building things, and music, particularly piano. As someone who isn’t particularly age focused, I enjoy the company of older people as that layer of drama or judgement that youth and inexperience can bring is removed. My friendship with Howard feels grounding and inspiring at the same time – there’s none of the invisible pressure I usually put on myself in terms of success and milestones, and we encourage and support each other’s pursuits. Covid really reconfigured the way Howard and I could spend time together. There were no more social outings or regular life drawing sessions, and both of us really felt this loss. Instead, I would go to his house, set up my easel in his driveway, and we would draw each other from a safe distance. It was this experience that was the catalyst for asking Howard to sit for me.

Melanie grew up in Sydney and graduated from the National Art School in 2015 before shortly making her new home in the Northern Rivers a few years later. Melanie is a painter and ceramicist who thinks in colours, lines, and composition. She is driven to create in pursuit of what she calls active stillness – that point where doing and being converge, where awareness crystallises and the noise quietens. Her work explores the possibilities that arise between two such states – that strange limbo between on and off, between slumber and wake, between masculine and feminine.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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ASHER VELING Lives and works in Nundah, QLD Unmasked: A Self Portrait during a Global Pandemic 2020, oil on polycotton $1,600 Sitter: Asher Veling My work explores themes of encounter, likeness and representation through portraiture as well as other genres. As social distancing is the new normal, I turned to self-portraiture as a reliable and safe subject. Painted from life during the height of quarantine in Brisbane, Queensland. Unmasked is a metaphor for portraiture’s ability to reveal an essence of the sitter, the moment when we ‘take off’ our everyday ‘mask’. This metaphor has suddenly become very literal as many people around the world have had to don a mask to protect from the potentially deadly Covid-19 virus. Though working to protect against an unseen threat the act of wearing a facial mask is metaphorical for a different form of protection we wear; our daily persona. As selfportraiture is a moment of ‘taking off the mask’, it is a representation of the vulnerability and isolation many are now facing.

Asher Veling has a Bachelor of Fine Art with Haonours from Queensland Collage of Art, Griffith University. His work is founded in the methodologies of traditional panting, otherwise referred to as academic panting. Through painting he explores themes of encounter, recognition and representation through the genres of portraiture as well as still life. Working primarily from life his work has a considered approach conveying subject matter as encountered.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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JACKLYN WAGNER Lives and works in Lismore, NSW Rosemary 2020, digital photograph on paper NFS Sitter: Rosemary Bashford I have photographed Rosemary Bashford of South Lismore before. She is my favourite subject, a very special and unique person. Rosemary was born in 1932 and lived much of her early life in Sydney. She moved to the North Coast in the 1970’s where she still lives. Aged sixteen Rosemary was travelling on a tram. She was approached by a young man. That man was a young artist called Norman Lindsay. He wanted to paint her for the Archibald Prize telling her ‘your life will change forever’. Despite many meetings and much discussion with her parents in the end they said ‘no’. I understand why he wanted to paint her. I pictured Rosemary in her South Lismore home in 2020.

Jacklyn Wagner was born in 1954 and lives near Lismore, New South Wales. She is a self-taught photographer whose career began 1984. A rapid succession followed in the world of photojournalism including twenty years as a photojournalist with the Northern Star. Highlights of that period include the 2000 Sydney Olympics, awards including 1999 TAB Best Action Photograph in any NSW publication, in 2002 Tom Barass Award for excellence in journalism, APN photographer of the year in 2000. Exhibitions include A Walk on the Southside and Heart Soul (a collaborative exhibition with photographer Peter Derrett). Both exhibitions are part of the Lismore Regional Gallery collection. She now works as a freelance photographer and has continued her passionate interest in documentary photography 66

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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RUDIGER WASSER Lives and works in Byron Bay, NSW Mary (from the Ianus-Passages series) 2019, digital photograph on canvas $2,000 Sitter: Mary Gardner This portrait of Mary Gardner is part of the series Ianus – Transitions in which I photograph people, friends, colleagues with a digital camera and a pinhole lens. Ianus was the Roman God of passages, transitions, gateways and doors and was generally depicted with two faces – looking forward and looking back. The portrait symbolises transitions that we all go through, moving on, getting older, opening new chapters. We constantly move from one phase to the next. Time doesn’t stand still; the present is already past. Therefore, the subject moves from face-on to camera to profile during a long exposure, creating the impression of two faces and moving time. With the combination of state-of-theart digital mirrorless camera and old-fashioned pinhole lens I reference transition in the technical sector. Mary Gardner is a good friend and renowned environmental biologist from Byron Bay. Her constant concern for the ever-changing and endangered environment made her a perfect choice for the topic of transitions. Byron Bay based photographer Rudiger Wasser is currently enrolled in a Master of Arts in Visual Arts at the Queensland College of Arts (QCA), Griffith University, Brisbane. He is a self-taught photographer who has exhibited in Byron Bay, Brisbane, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Lismore, Ballina, Murwillumbah, Lennox Head, and Stanthorpe. He has judged several photographic prizes and won numerous awards in photography. Rudiger Wasser works with digital cameras mostly with available light. His main subject areas are architecture, urban, street and landscape. Recently he has embarked on a portraiture project using pinhole lenses combined with digital sensors 67

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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HARRY WESTERA Lives and works in Gulmarrad, NSW Self Portrait with Heads 2020, oil on canvas $2,670 Sitter: Harry Westera I have portrayed myself with a ‘cast’ of plaster characters that have played a significant role in my life. I have made the moulds and casts of these and other portrait busts, supplying them to art schools and art students, and also to those who value the works as art objects, or for their historical reference. Many of the original casts were sourced from the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney where I trained in portraiture. For 130 years, ‘Ashtons’ has carried on the legacy of the classical ateliers and studios of Europe. Plaster casts of sculpted heads are useful tools for learning classical portrait drawing and painting. A subject’s likeness is already refined, simplified and characterised by the sculptor so the student can concentrate on form, tone and likeness and not be distracted by the complexities of colour. Also, the plaster cast never sags, take breaks, or nods off while posing! The casts represented here include the Australian sculptress Mildred Lovett, French philosopher Voltaire, the Florentine Renaissance politician and Medici ally Niccolo da Uzzanom and the infamous Roman Emperor Caracalla. Hanging in the shadows, is the death mask of Beethoven. Surely an interesting cast of characters gathered together!

Harry Westera trained at Julian Ashton Art School and with Tonal Impressionist portraitist Greame Inson. His work is strongly informed by University studies in Renaissance Art History. As a watercolour artist, Harry has tutored and led watercolour landscape tours within NSW, the Red Centre, Norfolk Island, and medieval towns of Central Italy. “I aim to express, through paint, the extraordinary in the ordinary, through considered observation of light passing over forms, people and places in the real world.” Harry is a fourth time finalist in the Northern Rivers Portrait Prize. Portrait commissions include Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of Southern Cross University.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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EDWIN WILSON Lives and works in Crows Nest, NSW Gallery Talk 2019, oil on canvas NFS Sitter: Edwin Wilson I was born in Lismore in 1942, and spent my early years in the then isolated farming community at East Wardell. This painting is in memory of a ‘Gallery Talk’ (at my 2016 RAS Retrospective, Lavender Bay Gallery, North Sydney), that had been opened and favourably reviewed by John McDonald (in the Sydney Morning Herald), a highlight of my late-life painting ‘career’. The painting was derived from an image by another north-coast boy, Paul Sheaffe (with a small insignia of PP, for Paul’s Productions, on the lower side of the lectern).

Edwin Wilson was born at Lismore NSW and spent his first five years at East Wardell, then lived at Brunswick Heads and Mullumbimby (published The Mullumbimby Kid (Woodbine Press, 2000)). He initially trained as a science teacher, and spent the last part of his working life at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. He has published thirty books (including New Collected Poems, Kardoorair Press, 2012), and became a serious painter when he retired from paid work in 2003.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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CAROLINE ZILINSKY Lives and works in Woolloomooloo, NSW Man With A Supple Heart 2020, oil on linen NFS Sitter: Shane Supple Shane Supple is my friend. His upbringing was so brutal few would survive yet instead of cracking he turned into a gentle man of great dignity. Here he sits in his dressing gown at 6am posing for his portrait over zoom. To this day his heart remains supple.

Caroline Zilinsky is an obsessive and reclusive painter. Her work explores the grotesque, absurd and tragic aspects of human nature through narrative imagery. She has been painting social and political work for several decades. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has had works in major prizes including the Darling Prize (National Portrait Gallery of Australia), Sulman Prize (AGNSW), Archibald PrizeSalon de Refuses, Kilgour Prize (Newcastle Art Gallery), Rick Amor Self-Portrait Prize and Muswellbrook Regional Art Prize to name a few. In 2020 she won the Portia Geach Memorial Award with her portrait of Anthea Pilko. 70

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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MICHELLE ZUCCOLO Lives and works in Brighton East, VIC Introduced species 2020, oil on Italian canvas $3,340 Sitter: Annabelle Ellis I have chosen to paint Annabelle Ellis - a young woman of European ancestry, and combine her with a bird that was initially imported to Australia for the purpose of game hunting during the early ‘white settlement’ of this continent. Introduced species cause devastating effects on Australia’s natural environment and eco structure. Although foxes, rabbits, pheasants, wild camels, and brumby horses are considered vermin who compete with native animals for territories, these creatures were introduced species. European Australians must accept responsibility for these actions and negligence, having bought domestic stock to these shores with the First Fleet more than 200 years ago. My painting contemplates this challenging situation – placing white Europeans and exotic creatures firmly in the picture plane. The duo remain symbolic of colonisation.

Recent winner of the prestigious Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize, Zuccolo has been a semi-finalist/finalist in the British Portrait Award, London, Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and Portia Geach Memorial Award. Her work has been included in the 7th Drawing Biennale, Drill Hall, ANU, Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing and the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, Brighton. Education highlights include Bachelor Degree and MA in Fine Art and being the recipient of the Italian Services Institute International Fellowship, conducting further research in Italy and Austria, and studying range of traditional and contemporary art forms with a private Art Academy in Florence.

2020 Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize Finalists | 11 Rural St, Lismore NSW 2480, p.02 66 274600, e.art.gallery@lismore.nsw.gov.au | www.lismoregallery.org |

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