Winner of the Percivals Portrait Painting Prize announced
Date published: 10 May 2016
The winner of North Queensland’s most prestigious portrait prize was announced at a gala celebration at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery in Townsville tonight. Lisa Adams from Cooroy, Queensland was awarded the $40,000 Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize for her stunning self-portrait Revelation.
Local artist Barbara Cheshire was the recipient of the $10,000 Townsville 150th Anniversary Portrait Painting Award for her impressive portrait of Loma Thompson. The Townsville 150th Anniversary Portrait Painting Award celebrates that achievements of the region’s artists and unearths the unique stories of the local sitters they portray.
Community and Cultural Development Committee chair Cr Colleen Doyle said the Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize was an absolutely stunning exhibition.
“It’s wonderful that the people of Townsville have the opportunity to view such high profile works for the next 10 weeks, and I am particularly excited by the addition of the Townsville 150th Anniversary Portrait Painting Award this year, and congratulate Barbara Cheshire on winning such a prestigious award.”
Judge Ross Searle, a former director of both Perc Tucker Regional Gallery and the University of Queensland Art Museum, chose the winners from more than 70 finalists. The 2016 Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize exhibition is a showcase of both established and emerging artists with a diverse range of portraits, with a multitude of styles and mediums displayed across both levels of Perc Tucker Regional Gallery.
Mr Searle was incredibly impressed with the quiet beauty of Ms Adams’ artwork.
“The strong narrative element in Lisa Adams’ painting connects to her personal journey as an artist and the resolve and commitment she brings to her work. Her processes recall the approach of Photorealists such as the American Chuck Close who, in the 1960s and 1970s, conscripted photographs as the basis for their paintings. While grounded in reality, Adams’ frequently fantastical imagery has seen her work compared with Surrealism,” Mr Searle said.
Lisa Adams was thrilled about her win. “I try to create honest paintings that speak both about my own personal experience as well as the larger human condition. Love and loss, success and failure, anguish and happiness, violence and tenderness, are all talked about in my work,” she said.
Local artist Barbara Cheshire was honoured to win the Townsville 150th Anniversary Portrait Painting Award. Ms Cheshire’s winning work is a portrait of Loma Thompson, a tireless community crusader and Cheshire’s mother-in-law.
Impressed by Ms Cheshire’s work, Mr Searle said it had been said of Barbara Cheshire that, in every work, the driving force remained the same: representing ‘complete human experience’ – the marriage of the physical and the spiritual.
“Thus, we have the integration of senses and soul. This recognition and celebration of the spiritual is a theme that has underpinned much of Cheshire’s artistic career. The portrait has a photo-realist optic that seeks to enter into the inner world and outer visage of the subject,” he said.
Gallery Services manager Shane Fitzgerald congratulated both winning artists.
“Both Lisa Adams’ and Barbara Cheshire’s works stand out in an incredibly strong field of finalists,” he said.
“The 2016 Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize attracted entries locally, national and internationally and I would also like to thank our esteemed judge, Ross Searle for his hard work in choosing the winners.”
Both artworks will be entering the City of Townsville Art Collection.
Paul Taylor from Glencore said Glencore was delighted to once again partner with Gallery Services, Townsville City Council to deliver the Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize.
“This exhibition is clearly a highlight in northern Australia’s arts and cultural calendar and undoubtedly one of Australia’s leading portrait prizes. My congratulations to Lisa Adams as the winner of this year’s Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize,” he said.
The Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize is on display at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery until Sunday July 10, 2016. Ross Searle will present a Judge’s Floor Talk at 10.30am Saturday 7 May. Attendance is free.
The next instalment of The Percivals, the DUO Magazine Percival Photographic Portrait Prize, will be displayed at Pinnacles Gallery from May 13 – July 10, with the major $10,000 acquisitive prize announcement to be made at the launch event, 7pm Friday, May 13.
