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The $20,000 National acquisitive Paddington Art Prize takes its place among the country’s most lucrative and highly coveted painting prizes. The prize encourages the interpretation of the landscape as a significant contemporary genre, its long tradition in Australian painting as a key contributor to our national ethos, and is a positive initiative in private patronage of the arts in Australia.
Judges Lou Klepac OAM (art historian, author, curator and publisher), Barry Pearce Emeritus (Curator of Australian Art, Art Gallery of NSW), and Jane Watters (Director of S.H. Erwin Gallery) have awarded this year’s prize to Tony Costa for his work entitled Fallen Tree Port Hacking River RNP.
“I found the direction of the fallen tree an exciting shape, together with the articulation of the surrounding angophoras. I am interested in the unique rhythms of the Australian landscape where feelings, not facts, dominate my work. I am prepared to sacrifice details, insisting on the reconstruction of my experience of place, in an attempt to pin down the quintessentials of my subject. My work is a combination of the real and the imagined, the inspiration for which is taken directly from life around me. The marks in my work are completely spontaneous and intuitive. I am always interested in transcending appearances in order to discover new pictorial truths,” explains Costa.
Honourable Mention Prize: Jeff Makin, Cradle Mountain, Tasmania
Highly Commended Prize: James Powditch, Silent Spring
COFA Limited Edition Print Prize: Jasper Knight, Northern Exposure
To see the full list of the 2014 Paddington Art Prize artists and their works click through to the finalists catalogue.
Tony Costa, Fallen Tree Port Hacking River R N P, gouache on paper, 135 x 114cm
Jeff Makin, Cradle Mountain, Tasmania, oil on linen, 122 x 183cm
James Powditch, Silent Spring, mixed media, 140 x 140cm
Jasper Knight, Northern exposure, mixed media on board, 150 x 150cm
