NATASHA WALSH
‘Notable Awards’ section
In a matter of months, young Sydney painter Natasha Walsh has scored a trifecta of art prizes – Newcastle’s Kilgour Prize, the 2018 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and most recently the Mosman Art Prize, with her series of delicate and wistful self-portraits.
Walshs career trajectory is set to soar after this triple win, yet her paintings are tiny in scale and demonstrate enormous sensitivity and quietude. At 24, she is the youngest artist (tying with Margaret Olley in 1947) to win the Mosman Art Prize, with an enigmatic portrait painted on copper revealing the artist removing a veil from her face. According to the artist, its title ‘The cicada’, symbolizes this insect’s associations with change and rebirth. The prize, now valued at $50,000, was judged by renowned artist and previous winner Cressida Campbell.
She remarked on the Walsh’s entry:
“The acutely observed and delicately painted pale figure emerging from the copper in her ethereal clothing is both startingly contemporary and yet wistfully mysterious at the same time. To paint a figure is always ambitious and Natasha Walsh’s ‘The cicada’ manages to be beautiful yet unsentimental, as well as original.”
The artist, who trained at the National Art School, is currently represented by Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney. A three time finalist in the Archibald Prize, Walsh often chooses unconventional materials for her figurative paintings. Her winning work for the Kilgour Prize, Newcastle Art Gallery’s award for figurative and portrait painting, was executed on a small chunk of marble she had lying around the house. ‘Within the Studio (self-portrait)’ is a fish eye lens view of the artist encircled within the confines of her small studio space.
The Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, awarded to Australian painters aged between 20-30 years, will see Walsh taking up a three month residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. Her winning body of work included a miniature self-portrait titled ‘Dear Frida’, an arresting and intimate work that emulates a painting by one of her artistic heroines, Frida Kahlo. Most of her practice reflects on mortality and the passage of time.
Guest judge Ben Quilty commented that her work:
“has a quiet yet very self-assured sophistication that belies her youth. The future of Australian painting is in fine hands!”
This appears to be a defining moment in Natasha Walsh’s career and her work can only be enriched by these multiple opportunities.