Archibald portrait a worthy winner, but Wynne landscape prize a scene stealer

Archibald winner …

Wynne Prize winner …

Portraiture prize has a deserved winner, but more interesting works belong to oft-sidelined Wynne and Sulman prizes

No one really understands the Archibald prize for portraiture. It’s an event that baffles outsiders in much the same way that the running of the bulls or chasing a wheel of cheese down a hill confuses tourists — the prize has its own logic, its own quasi-rules and its own often counter-intuitive outcomes. Don’t try to rationalise it, just go with the flow.

The painters who enter pin their hopes on finding just the right combination of a portrait subject and a convincing display of painterly craft. For those who can find it, they’ve found the $75,000 sweet spot between artistic innovation and crowd-pleasing sentimentality.

The finalists for 2014 are not that much different from most recent years with a selection of portraits of actors, politicians, sports people, patrons and some immodest artist self-portraits. Among all that, Fiona Lowry’s award winning Penelope Seidler is a logical winner, for two main reasons.

The first is that Lowry chose just the right subject for her painting: Seidler, an architect, arts patron and wife of the late Harry Seidler, is just the kind of person the judges of the Archibald — the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW — would like to honour. The second reason is that Lowry’s portrait is a bloody good painting. Basing her work on photographic studies, Lowry has applied her familiar airbrush and aerosol technique to render a ghostly image that works remarkably well in the flesh, if not so well when reproduced.

Read the full article, Guardian Culture Blog, here
Andrew Frost, The Guardian