Two Launceston painters, one of whom painted the same farm view for 100 days in a row, are finalists in a $30,000 national prize for landscape painting.
Daria Andrews and Brooke van Ruiswyk are among the finalists in the 23rd annual Paddington Art Prize.
The prize is an acquisitive award for painting inspired by the Australian landscap with the finalists’ exhibition opening in Sydney next week.
Andrews was selected for One Hundred Days Under the Tasmanian Sky, an oil on linen work made up of 100 small paintings of the same view.
She painted each one on site, on consecutive days, from a single fixed spot on her farm at Riverside.
The date and her start and finish times are written beneath every panel.
The last panel was painted on October 8, 2025.
“The day we moved in I looked at the view and promised myself I would never get used to it,” Andrews said.
“Painting the sky every day for a hundred days was how I kept that promise. When the sky changed, everything under it changed.”
Speaking to Pulse, Andrews said she painted several panels on many days and chose her favourites, adding that “some mornings were just crazy” in winter and spring.
A mostly figurative painter for around eight years, Andrews said the landscape project only happened because the place “sort of forced me to pay attention to it”.
This is the biggest prize she has been part of and said she would put any winnings into new paint and tools.
Andrews is a Polish-Australian artist represented by Madeline Gordon Gallery in Launceston. She has held nine solo exhibitions in Tasmania, Melbourne and Poland.
Van Ruiswyk, who grew up in Tasmania’s north-west and moved to Launceston for university in 2008, was selected for The Forgotten Paddock.
She has been a Glover Prize finalist three times.
“The Forgotten Paddock reflects the way memories we have pushed aside can quietly endure, resurfacing with time and revealing the emotional imprint of places once deeply connected to us,” van Ruiswyk said.
According to Andrews, the pair are the only Tasmanian artists in the exhibition with a Victorian artist’s painting of a Longford landscape also in the finalists.
Prizes will be presented on Thursday October 15 from 6-8pm. The free exhibition runs from October 16-25, 11am-5pm daily, at Council House in Woollahra.
