An Archibald win brought Blak Douglas plenty of advice. This is what he did with it

When Blak Douglas won Australia’s famous portrait prize three years ago, he asked three prior winners what he should do next. Each offered Douglas advice.

Cherry Hood (2002 winner) said, “Work your arse off and capitalise on your win because you have only got about 18 months before the fame starts fading away”, Douglas recounts.

Blak Douglas is drawing record crowds to the Penrith Regional Gallery. Credit: Wolter Peeters

“Euan Macleod (1999) said, ‘bugger off and have a holiday’, and Ben Quilty (2011) said, ‘select your gallery and dealer carefully, ensuring they have an international footprint’.”

Douglas is drawing record visitor numbers to Penrith Regional Gallery, which has opened the largest survey of his work ever held in the artist’s hometown of western Sydney, smack in the middle of 2025 Archibald Prize season.

Turns out Douglas was so overwhelmed with Archibald appearances in the immediate aftermath of the win he wasn’t able to capitalise as much as he hoped. Blak Douglas: The Halfway Line is his first major show since he became only the second Indigenous artist (after Vincent Namatjira) to win the Archibald Prize in its 100-year history.

Blak Douglas with his Archibald Prize winning portrait, Moby Dickens.Credit: Brook Mitchell

The survey draws together 40 works spanning his 26-year career from his first caricatures as an adolescent, inspired by the late cartoonist Larry Pickering, through to the 2022 Archibald Prize.

Douglas’ award-winning portrait of a defiant Karla Dickens, knee-deep in flooding waters, faces Douglas’ first Archibald 1999 entry of the former Indigenous senator, Aden Ridgeway.

“It’s a great accreditation, the Archibald Prize,” Douglas says. “It means that people take you just a little bit more seriously because it’s a pretty exclusive alumnus, or faux alumni.

“People who didn’t talk to me previously all of a sudden were my friends. What I explain to kids in art schools or aspiring art students is that a good part of your emerging career you are a puppet and when you win the Archibald you are the puppet master, your movement is not bound by the strings above. It certainly gives you a sense of self-worth and self-respect.”

The taxman took one third of the artist’s $100,000 prize money and with the remainder, Douglas purchased a house on Dabee Country, near Mudgee. He’s currently “window shopping” for a gallery and has entered the 2025 Sulman Prize for best genre painting.

“I knee-jerk bought out here,” he said of his house-buying. “The selling point was a large studio garage and if I hadn’t won the prize I wouldn’t have been any closer to impressing the bank.”

Recognition, however, carries its own pressures: “What you don’t want to be seen as is a one-hit wonder,” Douglas notes.

Blak Douglas is the moniker for Adam Douglas Hill, the name he took in 2014 to reclaim his Aboriginal ancestry – born to a Caucasian mother of Scottish descent and a Dhungatti Australian father.

This survey brings him full circle. His first art exhibition was staged in an industrial warehouse in Jamisontown, across the Nepean River from the gallery.

“At nighttime I was chipping away at these caricatures,” Douglas recalls of his early efforts. “Then Dad saw an ad in the paper for open day at Western Sydney University. Mum took me up there for it, the rest is history.”

Exhibition co-curator and director of Penrith Regional Gallery, Toby Chapman, said Douglas was an inspiration to the region’s emerging artists and deserving of major shows.

“We’ve only opened for a month so far and already 10,000 people have come through which for a regional gallery and a gallery of our size that’s a huge achievement. It’s been our most popular exhibition in five years.

“Blak Douglas speaks to audiences in direct and accessible ways. We are trying to inspire people and remind people this is not a town of just football and his art practice is an exemplar for western Sydney.

“He wears that badge proudly, and it’s evident in the work he makes, which is first and foremost about identity, and dealing with his own experience as a Dhungatti man.”

In his bold, expressive signature style, Douglas’ stance on social justice, Indigenous rights and climate inaction percolate through his paintings.

“I don’t paint flowers, I paint about social justice which has taken an even greater kick in the guts in terms of societal attitudes since the [Voice] referendum result.”

The show’s title, The Halfway Line, was chosen to point to new directions ahead, as he positions the Australian landscape in his painting.

“He’s maintained his artistic principles of representations and advocacy, but there is an increased capacity for maturity, and recognition of the power of conversations to convert,” Chapman observes.

Blak Douglas: The Halfway Line runs until July 20. The 2025 Packing Room Prize is announced May 1, the Archibald Prize on May 9.

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