Laura Jones wins 2024 Archibald Prize with portrait of Tim Winton

As an art student, Laura Jones worked as a florist to support herself and became known for her work painting giant still-life flowers.

She has now won the nation’s most prestigious portrait prize for her painting of a fellow nature-lover, author Tim Winton.

Laura Jones has won the Archibald Prize with a portrait of Tim Winton at the Art Gallery of NSW.Credit: Janie Barrett

Winton, despite his 40-year career, has never been painted for the $100,000 Archibald Prize until now. He described himself on Friday – on the news of Jones’ win – as a “reluctant sitter.”

Jones says the pair first connected over their concern for the protection of Australia’s reefs. Winton has spent over two decades campaigning to protect Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef, and has received an Order of Australia for his services to both literature and environmental advocacy. He’s also written more than 30 books, including Miles Franklin Award-winning Cloudstreet.

Jones created a series of works investigating climate change impacts on the Great Barrier Reef, wrote Winton a letter and sent him a book of her reef paintings.

“The Great Barrier Reef was the reason I met Tim … He rang me this morning to say he thought he looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders and he does. We do.”

Laura Jones’ Archibald Prize-winning painting, Tim Winton.

Winton says it was their shared passion for the environment that convinced him to sit for Jones.

“After we spoke for a while on the phone it was clear we had some pressing concerns in common, like the fate of our oceans, and our culture’s refusal to take the climate emergency seriously, so I ended up agreeing to sit for her,” Winton said from Western Australia on Friday.

Jones flew to Fremantle to sketch him, and now the work is the 103rd winner of the Archibald, Australia’s oldest portrait prize.

“He said to me during our sitting ‘the purpose of art is not to persuade, but to enchant’ and I think he’s done that for generations of Australians through his writing,” said the painter.

Jones, 42, grew up at the foot of the Blue Mountains. She was a finalist last year with her portrait of actor Claudia Karvan titled Claudia (the GOAT).

“As a little girl in Kurrajong, I dreamed of winning the Archibald,” Jones said. “I’m only the 12th woman to win … I hope this inspires more young girls to paint,” she said.

She is also a subject in this year’s Archibald, in a portrait by Daniel Kim with her fellow co-founders of the not-for-profit Incognito Art Show, Ed and David Liston.

She has been a long-time supporter of Studio A, the social enterprise that works with artists with disabilities such as Kim. Jones volunteers at the studio and the funds from the Incognito Art Show help support it. Studio A had four finalists in this year’s prize.

Laura Jones (right) was also a subject this year, in finalist Daniel Kim’s ‘Blue jeans and flowers’.

Jones is also a finalist in this year’s Sulman Award with Sliding Doors and her Wynne entry Slow Burn, has been selected in the Salon des Refuses.

The $50,000 Wynne Prize, Australia’s oldest art prize for Australian scenery or sculpture, was this year won by Djakaŋu Yunupiŋu with Nyalala gurmilili, made with natural pigments on bark.

Wynne Prize winner Djakangu Yunupingu’s ‘Nyalala gurmilili’.

Naomi Kantjuriny won the $40,000 Sulman Prize for genre painting or a mural project for Minyma mamu tjuta.

Kantjuriny is a community elder and leading presence at Tjala Arts in Amata on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY Lands) in South Australia.

Minyma mamu tjuta by Naomi Kantjuriny, winner of the Sulman Prize.

A distinguishing feature of this year’s Archibald was the large number of first-time finalists and young subjects as sitters, said prize curator Wayne Tunnicliffe.

He said there were many portraits of young change-makers in the fields of acting, music and social activism.

“The trustees chose lots of new young faces as subjects and artists. I think this change has brought a fresh energy in all three prizes,” he said.

Another change this year to the typical finalist line-up, said Tunnicliffe, is the lack of current sports stars – the only such portrait in the finalist exhibition is of Matildas forward Cortnee Vine, by first-time finalist Tim Owers.

Other finalist portraits in the field of sports include former Socceroos captain and human rights activist Craig Foster, painted by Julian Meagher, and Indigenous ABC presenter and former AFL player Tony Armstrong, painted by first-time finalist and Indigenous/Burmese artist Mia Boe.

The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prize exhibition opens on Saturday, June 8 and runs until September 8 at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney. It then tours to regional NSW and the Northern Territory.