‘You better get down here quick’: The race to paint an Archibald Prize winner

It was just three weeks ago that leading Australian portraitist Kirsty Neilson approached landscape artist Lucy Culliton to sit for the Archibald Prize.

“I’d been thinking, ‘will I or won’t I enter this year?’” Neilson said.

“I thought, ‘oh, let’s do this’, and it was only then that I phoned Lucy whom I’d always admired and has just the biggest heart. I had this idea to paint her in the landscape.

Kirsty Neilson in her Collaroy Plateau studio with sketches she made of fellow artist Lucy Culliton. Credit: Steven Siewert

“She said, ‘you better get down here, quick’. That was Sunday, and I drove the six hours to Lucy’s house on the Thursday. I painted when I got down there, stayed the night at her cottage and drew and painted the next morning.”

On Monday, the Art Gallery of NSW’s loading dock opens to entries marking the start of the 2025 Archibald prize season. Neilson will wait to drop the Culliton portrait – now at the framers – to the gallery on Friday, the closing day for submissions.

Art Gallery of NSW curator Beatrice Gralton said artists painting artists had long been part of the rich history of portraiture and the Archibald Prize. In the history of the Archibald, 37 winners have been of artists, with 13 of these self-portraits.

The relationship between artist and sitter is crucial in portraiture, influencing how the subject is portrayed and the way an artist interprets their personality and identity, Gralton said. Artists’ connections can add another layer of richness.

2025 Archibald Prize entry of Keith Looby.Credit: Kellie Leczinska

“Some of the best portraits by artists are of other artists,” she said, citing Mitch Cairns’ 2015 portrait of Peter Powditch as an example. “That success can depend on the ability of the artist to distil something essential about the other person, which doesn’t necessarily need to be didactic; it can be suggestive.”

But painting a fellow artist can be intimidating.

“There is a vulnerability in painting someone you usually admire,” Culliton, a seven-time finalist, said.

“Every year, somebody asks me to sit the Archibald. If they make an effort to come to me, then they can have a go.” She never proffers advice: “It’s not my call.”

Neilson, a five-time finalist, painted Culliton reclining in a lounge chair on the artist’s rural property, the setting sun tinging the sky pink and creeping dusk washing out the countryside. It came at the end of a frustrating day when little seemed to work due to the elements.

“I tend to stress people around me out, but I thrive on working to a deadline and the last-minute,” Neilson said.

It was a much longer process of refinement for portraitist Kellie Leczinska who painted Keith Looby, winner of the 1984 Archibald Prize.

“There really isn’t anyone out there painting like Looby,” she said. “He lays paint down thickly; it’s sculptural and can take years to dry. He still works seven days a week, he’s just devoted to his art. He thinks going out to lunch is a waste of time.

“Initially, I wanted to paint Keith as a head-and-shoulders portrait. But I didn’t feel that was enough to try and capture him. I played with some religious iconography but decided against it.

“So many of his paintings are very contained, with many people in them. So I decided to split two paintings from two different periods of Keith’s career and then paint in a version of the sculptural painting he is currently working on.”

Over three sittings last year in the studio of sculptor Stephen Coburn, her subject barely made eye contact, so engrossed was he in his own enterprise.

“Every time I paint someone, it’s really scary,” Leczinska said. “Regardless of who they are, you want them to like what you have painted. If they are an artist themselves, they can have a more critical eye. I place an incredible amount of pressure on myself. More than any prize, I really care what they think. But it also pushes me.”

Entries in this year’s Archibald Prize are due at the Art Gallery of NSW by March 28. The $100,000 winner will be announced Friday, May 9.

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