The Unconformity have announced Queenstown-based artist Raymond Arnold as the recipient of the West Coast Artist Commission for 2023.
The $5,000 acquisitive West Coast Artist Commission celebrates the talented visual artists living in Western lutruwita/Tasmania through the creation of an annual commissioned artwork, with the artworks accumulating to build a local collection representing artists and arts practitioners of the region.

Raymond Arnold, painting en plein air
The Unconformity Artistic Director Travis Tiddy said, “Often seen on the verge of the ’99 bends’ with easel and paintbrush in hand, his artwork surveys West Coast landscapes in all of their complexity and his practice is always inclusive of the people within the community.”

Raymond Arnold, Road to Other, 24 May 2022
Raymond will develop his commissioned piece using the plein-air technique and will finish the work at his home studio in Queenstown. “I’ve been developing paintings of the road out of the Queen River Valley (Gormie Hill/99 Bends/Lyell Highway) for a number of years now. They began during the COVID lockdowns and still carry something of that ‘vacancy’ which was a feature of the period,” said Raymond. “Indeed the ‘bigger picture’ for me and the very context for the paintings is concerned with that melancholy ‘arc of disappearance’ sliding between an individual’s death and the imaginary post-human landscape.”
He adds, “This commission allows me to focus on a major painting that will remain on the West Coast within the context of previous works by other West Coast-commissioned artists.
“It will contribute to the collective building of a creative response to the dramatic landscape and culture of the West Coast of lutruwita/Tasmania.”