Brisbane Portrait Prize
Brisbane Portrait Prize — 2024
Powerhouse Museum
Where the Wild Things Grow
Self portrait — acrylic on canvas, 101.5 × 121.5 × 3.5 cm — Finalist
A distorted self portrait that refuses to behave. Rachel stares out from the canvas with one large, unblinking eye through neon green glasses — a python coiled at her throat, a galah, kookaburra, rainbow lorikeet and magpie perched across wild green hair. Behind her, childlike drawings crowd the walls: the entire visual vocabulary of a life spent looking.
Selected as a finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize 2024 — one of Queensland's most prestigious portrait competitions — the work pushes at the boundaries of what a self portrait can hold: identity, wildness, memory, and the quiet absurdity of being an artist.
Artist's statement
Once I was a child with an endless imagination — growing up in suburban Brisbane, watching the world from windows overlooking the bush. Observers observing.
For a long time, being an artist wasn't on anyone's list. Determined to prove my purpose, I kept painting — and somewhere in that persistence, I found my story. The flow of paint. Colour giving life to form. Art as a tool for healing, awareness and voice.
This is how I became my authentic self — an Australian woman using the visual to make the world a better place.
Brisbane Portrait Prize — 2024
Basilea
Portrait — acrylic on canvas — Salon de Refusés
Sarah Heath of Basilea Living Herbs and Edible Flowers — mid-laugh, flowers pouring from her mouth, blooms cascading across her hat and shoulders in a riot of colour against deep olive green. Every petal painted with botanical precision, every bee placed with intention.
Basilea was selected for the 2024 Brisbane Portrait Prize Salon de Refusés — a curated exhibition running alongside the main prize, dedicated to works of exceptional quality that didn't make the final shortlist.
