Christine Hiller’s self portrait, The Old Painter, was picked from more than 3,000 works to win the award. (AAP : Tracey Nearmy)
A Tasmanian painter has won Australia’s leading prize for women artists for the third time in her career.
Christine Hiller’s huge self-portrait, The Old Painter, was picked from more than 3,000 works to win the Portia Geach Memorial Award.
“I wanted to show the isolation of the artistic person,” she said. “You’re very involved with yourself and it’s all fairly gloomy.”
The artist first won the $18,000 prize 23 years ago and again the following year.
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“It’s lovely. It was perhaps a recognition that what I do as an artist is worthwhile,” Hiller said.
Inspired by a recent trip to Mexico, the portrait shows Hiller with one hand on her head, wearing a smock surrounded by cactuses, with the Virgin of Guadalupe in the sky.
Hiller said she called it The Old Painter because she was starting to feel old in her stage of life and felt age and experience were sometimes under-appreciated in the art world.
-ABC/AAP: Read more here
