Nearly every artist who’s ever lived has sworn by drawing. It is a fundamental skill that Australian master Rick Amor has suggested is “the most direct and intimate expression of an artist’s sensibility.” To help promote drawing, the Rick Amor Drawing Prize is awarded biannually to a range of worthy entries.
The Rick Amor Drawing Prize for small drawings is an exciting award given to the best professional artists in Australia biannually. With a grand prize of $12,000, the contest continually receives outstanding works produced in this fundamental medium, and the tradition has continued with the 2016 edition.
“This year’s prize exhibition embraces landscape and figurative drawing; narrative imagery and abstracts,” the Art Gallery of Ballarat, host of this year’s exhibition, reports. “Some works are highly finished, while others show the artist in the spontaneous act of creation, where the hand is rendering what the eye is seeing at a given moment.”
This year’s top honor was awarded to Melbourne artist Peter Wegner for his outstanding triptych “Three Days with EM.” The work uses pencil and beeswax on rag paper. Reflecting on the work, Wegner suggests, “Drawn after E.M. entered palliative care, these three drawings are a way of saying goodbye and, at the same time, reflecting on the fragility of life.” Among many other artists, finalists exhibited in the show include Tracey Choyce, Janis Clarke, Richard Collins, William Collins, Samuel Rush Condon, Tony Costa, Pilar De la Torre, Mark Dober, Shay Downer, Adele Dubarry, Corrigan Fairbairn, and David Fairbairn.
The “Rick Amor Drawing Prize 2016” exhibition opened on July 9 at the Art Gallery of Ballarat in Australia and will continue through October 2. To learn more, visit the Art Gallery of Ballarat.
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The Most Direct Expression
