Elizabeth Fortescue
Landscape judges take to Jones
The Daily Telegraph, 12 November 2008, page 73.
Paddington Art Prize
Mary Place Gallery, 12 Mary Place,
Paddington; until November 23,
Monday-Saturday 11am-6pm,
Sunday noon-5pm
Lauded landscape: Alan Jones's winning work, Painting 63
ARTIST Alan Jones, winner of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship in 2004, yesterday took out the $20,000 Paddington Art Prize for landscape painting with his work titled Painting 63.
The judging panel, which included artist Kerrie Lester, awarded high commendations to two other entries. They were Catherine Woo’s Turbulence/Breathing Land, and Nigel Milsom’s Untitled (Judo House Pt.1).
The other judges were Ivan Dougherty Gallery director Nick Waterlow and Artbank director Geoffrey Cassidy.
There were more than 600 entries to the Paddington Art Prize, which celebrates landscape painting. Of those, judges selected 40 paintings as finalists. These also hang in the prize exhibition.
Artists to make the final cut included Rodney Pople, James Powditch, Chris Langlois, Ross Laurie, Katherine Hattam, Tom Carment and Yvonne Boag.
Jones’s painting of two heads in the landscape combined two painting styles – soft-focus with lots of varnish for the landscape, and thick oil paint for the heads, according to Lester.
She says the overall standard was particularly high and wishes she could have highly commended more works.
Unlike some prizes where the initial judging is done electronically from emailed images, the Paddington Art Prize was judged first-hand from entries sent from around Australia.
“All the paintings were here and we individually looked at each one,” Lester says. “It was exhausting.”
The prize was supported this year by the Collage of Fine Arts in Paddington, whose dean Ian Howard is opening the exhibition tonight. COFA is offering one artist in the prize the opportunity to produce a limited-edition print.
Jones won the Whiteley award, which takes the winner to Paris courtesy of Whiteley’s mother Beryl, when he was 27.
ELIZABETH FORTESCUE