Judges Comment: "The Orange Tree’ is evocative of a parched, semi-rural Australian paddock. The patchy and scumbled paint technique is effective and the warm but muted palette, the depiction of ghost-like tree-forms, the non-descript time of day, the stillness of the environment, and the dropped fruit from a well-laden tree, impart a sense of melancholy."
Highly CommendedTraditional: No. 14 "The Orange Tree"
by Charlie Wells
Judges Comment: "River Dog’ successfully combines passages of naturalistic form and abstract, painterly brushwork, contributing to tangible expressions of materiality, movement, and immersion. The painting demonstrates an astute understanding of compositional weight and rhythm, and a sensitivity and veracity in the portrayal of the action of a subject caught in time; the satisfaction and determination of this canine is palpable!."
Judges Comment: "Lush Greenery’ contemporizes the traditional genre of landscape by exploring the chromatic possibilities of shape and form and the application of paint. It is an interpretative work, suggesting layers of space and structure, light, shadow, and surface within the understorey and canopy of the natural environment, surely reflecting the artist’s appreciation of a specific site and place (mediated through photography or painted ‘en plein air’)."
