Adding an owl to this painting was a wise move, it just won a $75,000 prize

Noel McKenna’s painting William Nuttall with horses in field was ignored by the judges in last year’s Archibald Prize.

Fast-forward 12 months and the same work has scooped the $75,000 Darling Portrait Prize for the veteran Sydney artist. Actually, it’s not quite the same work. McKenna made a small revision in the interim, adding a tiny owl perched on a fence to the original scene.

Noel McKenna’s William Nuttall with horses in field, winner of the Darling Portrait Prize 2024.Credit:

“I added the owl to it before I put it into the Darling Prize and I suppose it brought me good luck,” says McKenna. “I kind of identify with the owl as an animal. I don’t really know why. I suppose in some ways I like owls in that you very rarely see them. They lurk in the background a bit and I am a little bit like that myself. I’m quite an introverted person, so the owl is me, really.”

The winning portrait is instantly recognisable as the work of McKenna, who won the 1994 Sulman Prize and has been a regular finalist in all the major prizes in his long career. The subject is his long-time agent and friend William Nuttall, depicted in a field with some of his horses.

“I was staying with him one weekend, and he just drove me to a paddock,” says McKenna. “I took some photos of him with the horses in the paddock and I liked the composition that came out. So that’s how the painting evolved.

“I liked it as a painting but one’s own view of work doesn’t always correspond with that of the judges, of course. So it’s always sort of a nice serendipity when they like what you like.”

Noel McKenna with his award-winning portrait.Credit: Mark Mohell

Horses and dogs feature regularly in McKenna’s spare, angular paintings reflecting his passion for animals.

“I kind of believe animals have a complexity about them more so than a lot of people give them credit for,” he says. “I feel they actually have a soul. I just feel very, very sensitive to them, I suppose.”

Meanwhile, the National Photographic Portrait Prize winner is South Australian artist Amos Gebhardt for their portrait of Indigenous author Alexis Wright – a Waanyi woman, who won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and the Stella Prize in 2018 and 2024.

Alexis with moon is a diptych showing a ghostly image of Wright looking towards the night sky.

“It is a part of a bigger series where I’ve been photographing people who I respect as visionaries and who address systems of power and liberation in their life and work in different ways,” says Gebhardt, who will receive $30,000 plus $20,000 in camera gear.

Amos Gebhardt with their winning work, Alexis with moon.Credit: Mark Mohell

“I’m interested in these figures because they’re often unacknowledged within the dominant narrative of the heroic.”

Gebhardt originally intended to make the portrait with a digital camera, but found the rendering of the moonlight was “too sterile” and switched to old-school medium format film.

“It was hard to work with,” they said, “but I loved working with it and it forced me to really slow down and to be very intentional and meticulous in how I worked with Alexis.”

The winning works and all the finalists are on show at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, until October 13