Appreciating an Archibald winner

The award is worth $100,000 to the man who has elevated his own view of the legal system in his artwork and takes him far away from the crime he committed in holding up a Seven Eleven store in Sydney not long after being awarded another prestigious art award,the Sulman Prize for his painting, Judo House 4.  He was sentenced to 6 years behind bars, but was released last year.  While inside he won the 2013 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, worth $150,000 for another painting, Uncle Paddy.

Have you been following the Archibald?  Let’s talk about it today.

Do you think that it is fitting that his winning portrait is the man he placed his faith in whilst inside the legal system?

Mr Milsom’s earlier prize wins were for different paintings.

Mr Milsom famously wrote about his earlier win in the Sulman Prize for Judo House 4 in this way:

“This work is from an on-going series based around the loose idea of gambling, whether it be with one’s life, money, career or simply in the day-to-day decisions we all make.

The actual idea for this painting came to me after meeting an old man at my local bus stop who told me he travels into a city leagues club every Saturday to drink and bet on the horses with some old friends. His wife had died and he lived a very solitary life apart from his Saturday social engagements.

In the painting I’ve tried to capture a kind of social loneliness. The wordSTOW is a reference to the late Australian writer Randolph Stow who wrote about fear and paranoia and how emotions seem to grip small, isolated communities in his novel The suburbs of hell. His name seemed apt for this painting as it creates a sense of mystery.”

Nigel Milsom, 2012