The "Archies"

My local town holds its own version of Australia's Archibald Prize - the "Archies".

And I won it with my paper portrait of Josephine! How chuffed am I!

This is the lovely man who sponsors the prize - Robert E. Clark. In the background are some of the other entries.

Yellow Box Eucalyptus Tree

I am blessed to live on a beautiful part of Australia's farming land. I look out my office window and see kangaroos, kookaburras, rosellas, swallows, eagles and beautiful cloud formations.

This is a Paper Cut of a particularly magnificent old tree - a yellow box eucalyptus - that shelters both our farmed and native animals.

The cut piece measures 55cm x 36cm. Cut by hand over 2 long nights.

Melody

This portrait was done for my dear friend. It is her grand-daughter who was fatally injured in a car accident on Christmas Eve 2009, when her car rolled and her laptop hit her in the temple.

Please do not carry such loose items in your car - put the under the seat or in the boot.

The original photo had a very mauve cast, which I kept.

18 different coloured papers, 12 layers.

Each work takes the best part of 7 days. 2 - 3 planning the work, making the layers, choosing colours. Another part of a day gathering the papers and canvas. 1 - 2 cutting and another 1 - 2 applying the sealers. As I get more comfortable with the technique however and make sure to keep good records of each face, the time passes easily.

I did use a spray glue on one face, but it is too risky. The different papers absorb the glue at a different rate and have sometimes come partially adrift. I don't want that "fear", so back to the runny glues.

Tami & Sascha

This is my oldest daughter Tami and her husband Sascha, both relaxing after her sister's wedding, mellowed out, half asleep.

One of the things I have learned is to make sure I get the eyes right. So the layers are built around the eyes, rather than the eyes added after. I spend a lot of time planning the layers before I cut anything.

I now have to learn to take better photographs of the finished portraits!

I experimented with this work, taking the features of the faces out of solid black. Tam feels I should keep the paper real, ie not varnish it, as she feels it takes away from the reality of using paper. She may be right.

After I complete each work, it sits on my piano until it goes to the owner. I get so used to having "company" that when the face goes I feel a little lonely. Especially when the faces are so dear to me.

I have a couple of faces to do for friends, but I am also working on using the same technique to make scenes. And my sister wants Robbie Williams to come and live with her - even if only in paper!

Josephine

Because I was creating this portrait for an exhibition, I took care to use what I had learned with the earlier works to make this as good as I could.

In the photo Jo was wearing a bowler hat, but the photo was so dark and shaded, that it took a lot of thought to work out how to create that realistically. In the end I simply cut a whole hat and head shape, then layered a brim only over that, with a "ribbon" layer along the hat's brim, making sure to cut it in a different direction so the warp of the paper showed as the ribbon. I was really pleased with the result as it had held me up for several days working out how to cut it.


At the exhibition, it was shown with a spotlight shining straight on it and it looked fantastic! Thank you Kalari Winery and Pamela! At the opening Anne Morton, a local artist with international recognition called me an artist. You can imagine how pleased I was.

Jo is a vivacious lady, I am happy I caught that in her portrait.

There is 12 layers in Jo's face and 16 different coloured papers. I used a gloss sealer on this one. I felt because the background is so black, the gloss gave it some extra life.

Judy Garland

In my mad fervour to create faces, I made a Judy Garland for my friend Jo who has a theatrical background, singing and acting for many years until MS confined her to her home.

She and her husband built a straw-bale house, with a mud floor. The most relaxing grounded home I have ever been in. Jo has a studio making her own CD's - if you enjoy beautiful music it's worth a visit.

The photo of the completed design didn't come out so well, so you get my working design here until I can get a better one. 8 layers and 14 different colours.

My mum

This is my mum Kathy. I made this for her 80th birthday from a photo taken at a family wedding.

Often the background colour is easy, sometimes there are several that have potential. Eventually I just feel more comfortable with one colour and the others go. (I used to do the same thing when I was working on a quilt design. Lay all the fabrics on the loungeroom floor, move around and past them for several days and gradually some would have to go, others would leap out and take pride of place, sometimes even changing the whole colour flow taking me back to the start.)

With this portrait, the background was very tricky. I wanted to use a silvery paper which blended really well with the work, but my husband felt the purple made the colouring and her facial features really stand out.

As you can see the purple won!

Mum and dad are very keen gardeners, not often dressed up, so I put little rhinestones on each earring to add to her gorgeousness! 20 different coloured papers, 8 layers.