WINNER

Artist Name: KARL DE WAAL

Artwork Title: THE LAND OF THE SAUSAGE SIZZLE

Medium: Found objects/cotton

Size: 150 x 150cm

About the Artist:

My work is a commentary on my experience of watching the world trying to make sense of its paradoxes and ironies. In an age where the bulimic consumption of information and knowledge saturates us, my work seeks to remind us of the fundamentals and fragilities of what makes us human.

Artist Statement:

Littered throughout the carparks of Bunnings lies an endless supply of detritus that exposes humanity's impact on our environment. This detritus speaks of human interaction and engagement. These mini assemblages created from these fragments have been placed in a grid to chart and map the cultural landscape.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: ANITA WEST

Artwork Title: BLUE MOUNTAIN CLIFFTOP

Medium: acrylic on linen

Size: 150 x 150cm

About the Artist:

My work is mostly place-based, and my practice is concerned with the recording and interpretation of natural habitat that has been preserved or protected as part of land conservation and National Park World Heritage. Through my work I want to share my love and affinity for our Australian landscape.

Artist Statement:

Walking along one of the many clifftop trails in the Blue Mountains, there are so many moments that give delight to the senses, the smell of new eucalypt saplings rising from the burnt ashes, the promise of new life, the majestic tree ferns rising up from deep gullies untouched by the fires.

Judge’s Comment:

Nice feeling of the bush and depth of space

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: SCOTT BRETON

Artwork Title: THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE SKY II

Medium: Oil on linen

Size: 110 x 110cm

About the Artist:

Scott is interested in how traditional plastic composition can be reimagined but honoured by the contemporary artist. This endeavour seems to closely mirror a more general exploration of how our contemporary experience relates to, and can be informed by, insights about the human condition from the past.

Artist Statement:

I find myself compelled to approach landscape painting as an attempt to compress the overwhelming experience of the immersive or monumental space of the natural world onto a small flat surface. I am exploring here the integration of the comprehensible space of three-point perspective prisms to assist with this expression.

Judge’s Comment:

Something monumental about this. Beautifully handled. For me it hints of a possible mathematical order behind everything.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: LINDY SALE

Artwork Title: FOREST

Medium: oil on board

Size: 50 x 60cm

About the Artist:

Lindy Sale recently moved to the forested Sunshine Coast hinterland. The key themes of her work are the beauty, mystery and strangeness of nature and the effects and marks of human settlement on the natural environment.

Artist Statement:

The forest landscape is dense and complex, endlessly varied and lush. It is made up of the darkest shadows and myriad greens, with sparks of brightness where light finds its way through the canopy above. It sometimes seems silent, but it pulses and breathes, sighs, cracks, chirrups and screeches.

Judge’s Comment:

Almost made it to my 10 list. Lovely light and atmosphere.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: SCOTT MCDOUGALL

Artwork Title: ELLERY CREEK BIG HOLE, NT

Medium: oil on canvas

Size: 160 x 104cm

About the Artist:

Scott McDougall is contemporary realist painter, Queensland born and educated, with diplomas in both Art Teaching and Fine Arts. He relocated to Sydney to pursue his painting career and has held over 30 solo exhibitions across Australia and overseas. Scott now lives and paints in his studio in the beautiful Tweed Valley.

Artist Statement:

The Aboriginal name for Ellery Creek Big Hole is Udepata. This water hole is a special meeting place for the Aranda people on the fish and honey ant dreaming trails. The rugged cliffs, craggy textures and rich colours that surround this tranquil gorge provided the inspiration for this painting.

Judge’s Comment:

Beautiful handling of the nuance of light and feeling of depth.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: NETTIE SUMNER

Artwork Title: BUSHFIRE, MIDNIGHT LANDSCAPE

Medium: Hand knitted copper wire sculpture 3D

Size: 50 x 120cm

About the Artist:

Nettie Sumner has been working in design and marketing for many years. She has experimented with ceramics, weaving, textiles and graphic design. Having recently achieved a Diploma of Ceramics and Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts, Nettie has exhibited in a number of regional and private galleries.

Artist Statement:

Bushfire, Midnight Landscape recalls the burns of the Australian memory; it carries husks of what was. This landscape grips onto night, darkness scarred with orange flames. It recalls the time when we slept under thick hot smoke, held breath in an amber coloured ether; peppered with ash and scorched splinters.

Judge’s Comment:

Just stunning work. Has a wonderful feeling of burnt out seed pods and vegetation, expressed with a very interesting technique.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: JESS LEONARD

Artwork Title: JASPER – RED SUN

Medium: Archival print on cotton rag paper, framed

Size: 81 x 105cm

About the Artist:

Jess is an emerging artist whose practice investigates the life and death of animals, arousing morbid curiosities whilst exploring the beauty in what has passed on. Jess graduated from SCA, Sydney University and continues to work in the arts industry, she has made the finals of numerous prizes and awards

Artist Statement:

Foxes were introduced into0 Australia with devastating results, but despite being a pest species this photograph observes their beauty and our profound and fragile Australian environment and humanities impacts upon it. A moment of empathy is captured, acknowledging the quiet scene found on the edge of the everyday Australian landscape.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: ROSE WILSON

Artwork Title: COCKIES OVER THE MOUNT

Medium: oil

Size: 120 x 95cm

About the Artist:

Moving to regional Victoria was the catalyst that made me delve from portraiture to Landscape. Trying to replicate the beauty and perfection of nature was a challenge so I remained in my comfort zone. Yet the bush drew me in, and she constantly tapped me on the shoulder demanding my attention.

Artist Statement:

My approach to portrait is completely different to landscapes which is more realistic. My landscapes tend to lean towards a more visceral effect. With sweeping movement i splash thin layers of paint over a thick palleted textured background, as the paint drips down and around the crevices it creates it’s own flow and pattern.

Judge’s Comment:

This is hard to tell from a small image. I would like to see more detail of the texture. It almost made it to my 10 list

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: KAY KANE

Artwork Title: THE RESTORATION OF VENUS II

Medium: Oil and Graphite on Heavy gessoed Artists Water colour Paper

Size: 60 x 178cm

About the Artist:

Kay completed her undergraduate degree in Fine Art in London, and her Doctorate at QCA Brisbane after returning to Australia.
Her work, influenced by artists such as Degas, and Sydney Long, is representational but not a form of ‘realism’. She has exhibited in major exhibitions in Australia and internationally.

Artist Statement:

One of a series of paintings which aim at retrieving an idea of beauty largely eclipsed in contemporary art, this painting combines of nude and landscape inviting exploration of the deep visual resonances between human and environmental forms, an effect amplified by multiple figures deployed and integrated into Springbrook landscapes.

Judge’s Comment:

Although this image obviously does not show the whole composition I find it very compelling. Lovely rhythms and a hint of Cezanne.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: CAROLYN V WATSON

Artwork Title: STAY OUT OF THE FOREST

Medium: natural and artificial forms

Size: 130 x 120cm

About the Artist:

Born in regional N.S.W, Carolyn V Watson anchors her process driven practise in a place between the natural and the unknown. A multi-award-winning artist, Watson work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout Australia. Her work is held in public and private collections in Australia, and internationally.

Artist Statement:

"stay out of the forest" is an exploration of space and perspective that evokes a sense of isolation that echoes through the Australian landscape.
From the two female figures, dwarfed by tree like structures, to the barren terrain and the flat field of grazing land, stay out of the forest at once draws upon the tradition of Frederick McCubbin and the haunting evocation of the pan pipes of Peter Weir’s " Picnic at Hanging Rock".

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: LEIGH SCHOENHEIMER

Artwork Title: REGENERATION (AFTER THE FIRE)

Medium: Formed copper tube, timber offcuts, stones and found object

Size: 25 x 35cm

About the Artist:

Leigh Schoenheimer lives and works in Brisbane. She conducts a contemporary, multidisciplinary art practice, working primarily as a painter and maker of idiosyncratic assemblages.

Artist Statement:

This sculpture alludes to the budding of forest regrowth after a bushfire. With a nod to the Cubist and Dada artists who pioneered the practices of assemblage and collage, this small, two part work depicts a tree-scape as it begins to regenerate, signalling relief and hope for the future.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Artist Name: RYAN ANDREW LEE

Artwork Title: WONNARUA, 2020.

Medium: Video/Installation

Size: 60 x 100cm

About the Artist:

Ryan Andrew Lee is a conceptual artist whose works explore alternative ontologies and epistemologies which are strongly influenced by First Nations philosophies of life and mind. Most commonly sing the mediums of moving image and installation Lee strives to create works that resonate on a deeper level of consciousness with the intent to unify all things.

Artist Statement:

'Wonnarua' is a video-based installation work that aims to provoke discussion around themes of Indigenous ways of living in juxtaposition with Western Settler-state system's unsustainable, damaging ways of using stolen lands. In today's current global state of environmental emergency, the need to embrace traditional Indigenous knowledge of country is now more crucial than ever before. The work is a plea to listen, learn and implement the vast environmental knowledge of First Nations people in the re-thinking of today's current systems that are clearly not working, in order for everyone to move forward inclusively with each other and the land as one.

Judge’s Comment:

This highly affective video work presents alternate ways of being in the landscape. A profound image urgently relevant for our time.