Hobart artist Nicholas Blowers has won the 21st Glover Prize with his oil on canvas painting ‘Lake Bed’.
Blowers picked up a grand prize of $75,000 for his artwork inspired by the desolate landscape of Lake Gordon, depicting a dried-up reservoir and a “drowned forest.”
“In 2015, I went in search of a landscape that I briefly glimpsed,” Blowers said.
“The water level at Lake Gordon had fallen by 45 metres and a drowned forest had been revealed. It appeared to be an extraordinary scene of tree wreckage and this previously logged forest now stood in the daylight.”
He described the scene as a “chaotic spectacle” that “immediately appealed” to him and said the painting captures a gritty and dark realism, reminiscent of the chaos of World War I battlefields.
“I visited the shores of Lake Gordon many times over this period and came to feel that the power of this place had something to do with the gulf between the underwater world and this new reality.”
Judges praised ‘Lake Bed’ for its manipulation of light and tone, telling a compelling story of the Tasmanian landscape.
They chose the painting from a record-breaking 740 entries.
The Glover Prize exhibition is open to the public in Evandale’s Falls Park Pavilion from March 9 to March 17.
