Talking with Painters

You may know Dee Smart from the popular Australian television series Water Rats or Home and Away or from her feature film roles but you can now add the Archibald prize to that list. She has been shortlisted in the famous portrait prize two years in a row, this year with a striking painting of choreographer and dancer Meryl Tankard. She took up drawing and painting over 15 years ago and honed her c...

Steve Lopes is not looking to make a pretty picture. For a work to be enduring he believes ‘there has to be a level of poison in it’, some gritty quality that keeps you coming back. His powerful painting which won the Gallipoli Art Prize this year contains that little bit of poison. It lures the viewer with an evocative sunset only to reveal the reminders of battle trenches and detritu...

John Wolseley is one of Australia’s most important artists.  He portrays the Australian landscape and its ecosystems from the roots of a tree to a whole floodplain; from trees, birds and fish to a tiny beetle. Using a variety of techniques, he says he creates a kind of inventory or document of the state of the earth, revealing both the energy and beauty of it. To do that he physically immerses him...

Wendy Sharpe is one of Australia’s most acclaimed and significant painters. She won the Art Gallery of NSW’s Sulman prize in 1986 and has been powering through the art world ever since. She went on to win Australia’s most well-known art award, the Archibald prize, she’s won the Portia Geach – twice – and many other awards. She’s reportedly been finalist more times than any other artist...

Imagine you’re out in the wilderness at least an hour’s walk from any sign of human life. It could be very hot, it could be freezing, and in front of you lies a canyon or a snow bank or a river glittering in the sun. Just you, the landscape and your paints. This is how Tim Allen often starts off his expressive landscapes and it’s become an important part of his practice. Allen won one of Aus...

See the Talking with Painters YouTube video below In 2017 a group of twelve Australian artists travelled to Belgium and France to the first World War battlefields of the western front. They created work en plein air, in their hotel rooms and in their studios, documenting their impressions of what they saw and experienced. This powerful exhibition has just started its tour around Australia at New E...

Lottie Consalvo is not only a painter. She works across performance art, photography, video and sculpture.  She’s had 9 solo shows in painting alone in just 8 years and has had many more performances and group shows. In 2015 she was one of only 10 artists chosen to take part in a residency in Sydney with world famous performance artist Marina Abramovic and her solo exhibition of painting and sculp...

Although she first went to art school at 15, it wasn’t until she was 38 that Megan Seres started on her path to become a practising artist – when she enrolled in Sydney’s National Art School. Then in 2016, encouraged by a friend, she reluctantly entered the prestigious Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and was shocked when it was announced she’d won. The winning portrait of her...

If he doesn’t have a paintbrush in his hand it’s likely he’ll have a guitar because Peter O’Doherty is as much a musician and songwriter as he is a painter. It wasn’t long after leaving high school that he filled in for a guitarist of his brother’s band who had gone on holidays and ended up never leaving. That band was Mental As Anything which rocketed to fame in Australia in the...

Born in the US and currently living in Australia, Renee French is an artist acclaimed for her hundreds, if not thousands, of drawings in the form of original works, art books, graphic novels, underground comix and children’s books which she has created over the last 25 years. Her art has been exhibited in solo shows in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo (several which sold out) as well as in ma...

William Mackinnon’s landscapes are at the same time familiar and unexpected. Car headlights illuminate a dark country road revealing improbable markings; a coastal scene viewed through a tangle of gums unveil pink and aqua islands in the distance; a suburban setting is dominated by a flattened brick path and geometrically striped grass verge. He calls them ‘psychological landscapes’ which ex...

Vincent Fantauzzo is one of Australia’s most popular portrait artists.  He has won the Doug Moran National Portrait prize, is a four time winner of the Archibald People’s Choice award and was recently commissioned to paint the official portrait of former prime minister Julia Gillard for the Parliament House collection. But his wasn’t a smooth path to success. He grew up in a toug...

Paul Ryan has had a huge year – 3 solo shows across Australia with Nanda Hobbs, Edwina Corlette and James Makin galleries as well as work being shown with all three at Sydney Contemporary. He has exhibited his work in over 20 solo shows. He’s won numerous art prizes and has been shortlisted many times – 13 times in the Archibald Prize – and on two occasions he achieved the rare distinction o...

Prudence Flint paints women. Usually in an interior setting and often in an intimate, solitary moment. Her subject might be in the bathroom, showering, or lying on a bed staring at the ceiling or in the kitchen drinking a glass of water. She explores that moment in time in a unique way, through her use of light, colour, portrayal of space and magnificent use of distortion. Flint has won many art a...

Ken Done has the most widely recognised name and work of any living Australian painter. His paintings are about the good things in life – happiness, joy, beauty. And they’re about colour.  Lots of colour. He had his first solo show 37 years ago when he was 40 after a successful career in advertising. Since then he has had nearly 100 solo shows, received an Order of Australia, gained ce...

Click here to hear extended interview on YouTube and scroll down for my four YouTube videos of Aida Tomescu She fled communist Romania in 1980, arriving in Australia knowing no-one. But Aida Tomescu has gone on to become one of Australia’s most important abstract painters. She has exhibited in over 30 solo shows – including a major survey of her work in 2009 with the Drill Hall Gallery...

Vanessa Stockard’s work is powerful. If you look into the eyes of her ‘Self-portrait as new mum’ which is hanging in the Archibald Prize this year you’ll probably see something different to the person standing next to you. Her expert use of colour and mixture of some looser and other more deliberate marks makes it one of those beguiling paintings where the expression is so subtle that it’s o...

In 2007, Archibald prize finalist, Jonathan Dalton, decided to let go of the photography business he had built up in his homeland of Ireland and started teaching himself to paint. Just two years later he won two of the country’s major art prizes. It was clear he had taken the right path. With the prize money he and his wife spent time travelling and lived in Spain for a few years before arri...

Armed with her favourite palette knife which she’s used for the last 10 years, Amanda Penrose Hart dynamically captures the landscape in paint both en plein air and in her studio. She won the Gallipoli Art Prize this year with her painting ‘The Sphinx, Perpetual Peace’ and her upcoming show at King Street Gallery on William in Sydney will be her 25th solo show. She has won and been shortlist...

He’s a musician, singer, songwriter, poet and sculptor but of course James Drinkwater is primarily a painter and one of the most exciting contemporary artists creating work in Australia today. Drinkwater started his art training at 10 years of age and now, at 33, has exhibited in 20 solo shows in Australia, London, Singapore and Berlin. He’s been awarded the coveted Brett Whiteley Travelling Art s...

Jude Rae is as interested in faces as she is in gas bottles and airports with her work crossing genres from portraiture to still life and architectural interiors. Amongst the very few artists to have won the Portia Geach Memorial Award for portraiture twice, she was also awarded the Bulgari Art Award last year with her painting ‘SL 359’, a meditative still life. She has exhibited in ov...

Joanna Logue is an award-winning painter whose work distinctively reflects her experience of the countryside and bushland. Through her sensual application of paint, she transports the viewer into a dreamlike landscape. She has exhibited in 34 solo shows and her work has been included in over 65 group shows. Her work is held in public and private collections and she has received many commissions. A...

He only started painting about 18 months ago, but Jordy Kerwick has caught the attention of art dealers and curators across the world. As this episode goes online, his first solo show opens at Lindberg Galleries, in Melbourne, Australia. His next will be in New York’s Anna Zorina Gallery and will be followed by another five group shows which are coming up in Europe and the US. Kerwick attrib...

At only 32 years of age, Natasha Bieniek has been awarded the Wynne prize for landscape painting, the Portia Geach Memorial award for portrait painting and the Metro art award, has been a five time finalist in the Archibald prize, a three time finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait prize and has been shortlisted in many others. Impressive as that is, what’s more amazing about Bieniek’s...

Lewis Miller is one of Australia’s greatest living portrait artists. He won Australia’s most famous portrait award, the Archibald prize, in 1998 and has been a finalist 17 times. As well as winning and being shortlisted in many other art awards, his works are held in numerous public and private art collections in Australia and internationally. He has had 30 solo shows and his work has...