Kiama district resident has taken home the world’s richest portraiture prize on Wednesday, The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize.
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Artist Megan Seres, who also works as a cleaner, was announced the winner of the $150,000 honour in Sydney for a painting of her 10-year-old daughter Scarlett Hill in colonial dress.
The Portrait judges commented: “When we know the reason for creating this painting we understand a fuller emotional account of the portrait’s subtle force. Seres’s daughter Scarlett had been studying Colonial Australia at school, and was cast as the convict Mary Wade in a play.”
Meantime Bulli High School student Lachy Starling won the photographic prize for students in years 9 to 10, scoring $3000 for himself and another $3000 for his school.
Starling’s image depicts a bodyboarder “taking a free fall drop” south of Wollongong which was taken earlier this year.
“I’m pretty stoked,” he said, while he intends to use the money for a new underwater camera housing to continue his passion of photography.
The judge’s comments said the image portrayed the “power and raw energy of nature” as well as noting the photographer’s “superb timing”.
Winning portraits are acquired by the Moran Arts Foundation and exhibited permanently as part of the Moran Arts Foundation Collection.
Nursing-home tycoons Doug and Greta Moran founded the prize in 1988.
The Moran Prizes exhibition will open October 27 at Juniper Hall in Paddington and will run Wednesday to Sunday until February 5 2017.