Johannes Leak’s portrait of Jacinta Price captured her inner strength

A portrait sitting became a conversation about art, family and music – with a civil rights anthem for a soundtrack | SEE THE ARCHIBALD ENTRIES

Johannes Leak with his Archibald prize entry, a portrait of Alice Springs deputy mayor and advocate for Indigenous women Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: Ramin Far Azin

When Jacinta Nampijinpa Price visited Johannes Leak at his studio last summer for a portrait sitting, they talked about music, art and family, and played classic soul.

Price said they also bonded over shared values – of honesty, standing up for the marginalised, and sticking to their convictions.

The finished portrait, Price said, captured everything she hoped it would say about her.

“It was more than just sitting for a portrait,” said Price, the deputy mayor of Alice Springs and an advocate for Indigenous women. “It was unspoken, but in a way it was a statement about the importance of voices like Indigenous women – the things I fight for.”

Leak and Price agreed that Leak would enter the portrait in the Archibald Prize. This week, he learned it was not among 52 finalists for the $100,000 award.

There may be a family connection in that, too: Bill Leak was a ­serial Archibald finalist – his subjects included Donald Bradman, Malcolm Turnbull, Robert Hughes and Sir Les Patterson – but he never claimed the prize.

It was Johannes Leak’s first ­attempt at the Archibald and he was happy to have had a crack at it.

The portrait was painted with materials he had inherited from his father.

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“Me, out of anybody, should know that getting your hopes up, and getting wound up about the Archibald, is a sure-fire way of driving yourself mad,” he said.

“I think the best approach is to see it as an opportunity, but not get your hopes up too much and get carried away.”

Price said she too had strong family connections in the portrait.

She had always thought she ­resembled her maternal grandfather, Dini, but the picture showed her most powerfully as the granddaughter of Clara Nakamarra France.

“She had 12 children, and she gave birth to those kids mostly in the desert – she had been through incredible life changes,” Price said. “It makes me emotional to think about it.”

The Weekend Australian’s art critic, Christopher Allen, said the portrait was “not a subtle or sensitive painting”.

“But it is clearly a strong likeness .... one can only assume a work as striking as this was excluded because the Trustees were afraid of implicitly raising the real questions that need to be asked about Aboriginal communities,” Allen said.

“It’s so much easier to get kudos by including some harmless Aboriginal portraits and filling up the Wynne with bland dot paintings.”