Portia Geach Prize: Highly Commended

Victoria Reichelt

1 - 31 Aug 2019

Congratualtions to Victoria Reichelt who was awarded highly commended at this years Portia Geach Prize.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award is Australia’s most prestigious art prize for portraiture by women artists.

La Mere (after Elizabeth Nourse) is a reimagining of a painting by American artist Elizabeth Nourse, a groundbreaking 19th/20th century painter who paved the way for female artists in her time. Reichelt’s reimagining of her work La Mere (the Mother) is a self-portrait, depicting the artist in the studio struggling to find a balance between the demands of work and the challenges of motherhood.

Elizabeth Nourse painted unvarnished depictions women as they were in everyday life. Similarly I am aiming to depict my everyday, by creating an honest portrait of the life of a contemporary artist who is also a mother, a situation which often demands late night work in the studio after a day of taking care of children. The work uses a heightened chiaroscuro effect to highlight the emotion of the situation – an ordinary scene in my day to day, but one that is charged with rich and contradicting feelings.