The Sydney artist Lucy O’Doherty, daughter of Mambo artist Reg Mombassa, is off to Paris after winning the 2016 Brett Whiteley travelling art scholarship.
The 30-year-old was awarded the prize for her painting Shack at Little Garie on Thursday.
Guest judge and artist Tom Carment said O’Doherty had created a quirky, timeless world.
“Her combinations of tertiary and pastel colours are unusual, and her sense of form defies logic and yet makes sense. There is a stillness about these paintings which I admire.
“Lucy’s work shows a level of maturity and qualities of perseverance which I think will serve her well when she goes to Europe; to live in an unfamiliar culture, absorb great art and take on new challenges and painting motifs.”
O’Doherty has won a three-month residency at Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris with a $30,000 art education grant. She graduated from the National Art School in Sydney in 2011 and has been a finalist in the Pro Hart outback art prize and the Mosman art prize.
A work by Jason Phu – The penis emerges, the rooster crows, God awakens – was awarded the $5,000 highly commended prize.
“Jason’s paintings have a refreshing exuberance,” Carment said. “He revitalises a traditional form of painting; his scattergun ink calligraphy forming a dynamic matrix for the placement of his humorous and disparate imagery.”
The annual scholarship was established in 1999 by Beryl Whiteley, the mother of the late artist Brett Whiteley, and is open to Australian painters aged between 20 and 30.
Previous winners include Marcus Wills, Ben Quilty, Mitch Cairns, James Drinkwater and Tom Polo.
Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
