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TIM STORRIER‘s portrait of friend and fellow artist Mclean Edwards is the winning entry of this year’s Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. Photo by Belinda Rolland. Courtesy the artist and Moran Arts Foundation, Sydney.
Australian painter Tim Storrier has been awarded the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize for his portrait of friend and fellow artist McLean Edwards. The award is Australia’s richest portraiture prize, which will grant Storrier AUD 150,000 (USD 118,000). His winning piece, The Lunar Savant (Portrait of McLean Edwards) (2017), shows Edwards standing under moonlight, overcoat stained, cigarette in hand, with his right shoe missing.
Daniel Thomas, prize judge and director emeritus of the Art Gallery of South Australia, commented that Storrier was “a veteran artist who went outside his personal mythology and produced an affectionate, teasing ‘friendship painting’ of a wild fellow artist.” Storrier and Edwards have been friends for over a decade, and the latter painted a portrait of Storrier in 2010 for the Archibald portrait prize. Previously, Storrier was the winner of the 2012 Archibald prize—he won after submitting a “faceless” self-portrait.
The 30 finalists for this year’s Doug Moran prize include McLean Edwards, Anh Do, Dagmar Cyrulla, Jiawei Shen and more. Aside from Daniel Thomas, the finalists were judged by artist Wendy Sharpe, as well as Greta Moran, who co-founded the Moran Arts Foundation with her late husband Doug in 1988. The annual award aims to encourage development in contemporary Australian portraiture, and asks artists to depict “Australians from all walks of life.”
The portraits by all 30 finalists will be exhibited at the Juniper Hall, Sydney, until December 17.
Helena Halim is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.
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