Far North Queensland-based artist Naomi Hobson has been awarded the 2022 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize for her painting ‘Sand dunes on the coast’.
Ms Hobson was one of 28 finalists who were selected from an Australia-wide field of more than 400 entries, and who are among the country’s finest established and emerging artists.
‘Sand dunes on the coast’ is representative of Ms Hobson’s distinctive style: her vibrant multi-layered compositions emerge from and convey a deep ancestral connection to the traditional lands of the Kaantju/Umpila people, on which she was born and continues to live and work (in the coastal town of Coen).
“This work is inspired by feelings towards my natural world,” she said.
“It’s the light of the coastal morning sun shimmering across the ocean and lagoons. It’s the soft angular contours of the western slopes slowly descending to a sea of wetlands.
“The drama of folding and collapsing mountain ranges with the weather waiting to happen one way or the other.
“All the while my family and my ancestors received and gave. Mountains, plants, animals, and people. We are all one. We are Grounded in Nature.”
The selection panel included Lisa Byrne, Director, McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery, Kyla McFarlane, Senior Academic Programs Curator, Museums & Collections, The University of Melbourne, and Lisa Sullivan, Senior Curator, Geelong Gallery, who were drawn to the energy and structural complexity of Hobson’s interpretation of the natural world.
