Noel McKenna, self-professed ‘Archibald reject’, claims Darling prize
One art competition’s reject turned into another’s treasure for veteran painter Noel McKenna – with a slight rework to claim the top gong.
It was nothing more than a submission on a whim, a slight repaint, and a bit of validation, veteran painter Noel McKenna says of his Darling Portrait Prize-winning work.
The self-professed “Archibald reject” secured the National Portrait Gallery’s biennial top award on Friday for his painting of a long-time friend, standing in the midst of his farm surrounded by his beloved horses.
Speaking as bluntly as the title of his work suggests – William Nuttall with horses in field – McKenna tells the Australian: “I thought it was good, but you never really know if people will agree with you. I got the confidence to submit it because quite a few people saw it and recognised Bill!”
With an artistic career spanning four decades, McKenna says the watercolour work illustrated in his sparse, linear style, was initially rejected from 2023’s Archibald competition.
In the time between the two competitions, he added an owl perched atop the fence – something he believes “may have been the winning element”.
With whimsical trees dotting the background, and soft hues of greens, browns and blues offering a gentle image evoking McKenna’s signature motif of humans’ connection with animals, the love letter to the Australian natural landscape was almost foiled by technology.
“There were certain stages I wasn’t going to put in, because I’m not very good with online submissions, so I found it difficult to do the application,” the Brisbane-born painter jokes.
His candour speaks to a wider encouragement to draw people back into galleries. “I’m still of an age of doing things the artisan way by hand and I maintain work should always be seen in the flesh.”
The five-time Wynne Watercolour Prize winner, Sulman Prize recipient and regular fixture in the National Portrait Gallery says that despite a string of accolades and international gallery shows behind him, it remains “always a surprise” to win.
“They were quite late in telling me so I wasn’t 100 per cent this time,” he laughs.
Amos Gebhardt received the gallery’s National Photographic Portrait Prize, for a celestial portrait of Waanyi author Alexis Wright as she peers deep into the night sky.
The image of Wright, a silhouette shrouded in darkness with a single stream of light bathing her face, captures the “luminosity in her voice as a storyteller”, Gebhardt tells The Australian.
The picture, born from a larger series of works the South Australian-based artist and filmmaker is constructing of people who address systems of power, seeks to pair Wright “in conversation with the night sky”.
While a simple portrait, monotone and pared back in nature, Gebhardt explains a mere six photos were taken over the course of 2½ hours, late one cloudless night during a February full moon cycle, due to the large format of the final product.
“I think one of the experiences of photographing Alexis under the moonlight was there was a quite beautiful distillation of time that happened,” Gebhardt shares.
“It’s a choreography of light.”
The National Photographic Portrait Prize and the Darling Portrait Prize will be open to the public until October 13.
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