Through the Artists’ Eyes: The Lester Prize – The Black Swan Years

Through the Artists’ Eyes: The Lester Prize – The Black Swan Years
Dr Shelley Craddock
The Lester Inc

Portraiture defines the identity of a nation and its people by race, gender, politics, culture and history. It can encapsulate the moral, social and psychological concerns of the contemporary community it reflects. Encouragement for this genre by way of competitions has given rise to numerous prizes for portrait painting in the Eastern states, but in a country as large as Australia it has been prohibitive for artists from the Western state.

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The Black Swan Prize for Portraiture grew out of this need. When artist Tina Wilson laid the groundwork for an alternative prize, her aim was to enrich portraiture locally in Western Australia. The hard cover book ‘Through The Artists’ Eyes’, written by Dr Shelley Craddock documents the history of the prize from its modest beginnings in 2007, to 2018 when it was later rebranded The Lester Prize, taking on the name of the founding sponsor Richard Lester AM.

Each chapter highlights a year of the prize with personal accounts of the winning artists and their subjects, including Nigel Hewitt (2009) and Marcus Callum (2015). But many of the winners are not household names, revealing the distinctive method of judging the anonymous submission of artwork, therefore focusing on the merit of the work without the support of a CV.

In 2013, Melbourne-based Richard Lewer was caught unaware when his name was announced as overall winner. His subject was Frank Ansell (Nungkari and Rainmaker) with whom Lewer had developed a bond while on residency at Fremantle Arts Centre. While recovering from serious illness during this time, he embarked on a series of works around healers and Frank Ansell became the centrepiece. Lewer’s artistic practice has continued to focus on subjects which question the everyday with a critical edge. In 2016 he won the Basil Sellers Art Prize for a group of twelve vulnerable and disappointed sportsmen and women depicted in the moment of losing an event.

The winners’ stories demonstrate diverse ways that recipients have used the prize funds for career development – such as studying in New York (Marcus Callum, 2015); trips to Europe, and exhibition invitations from Japan and China (Peteris Ciemitis, 2010); or attending a drawing program in Florence (Rachel Coad, 2016). The celebration of these artists and their practice internationally has firmly entrenched the importance of The Black Swan Prize, championing Western Australian portraiture.

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