Nicole Kelly has been announced as a finalist in the STILL: National Still Life Award 2025.
Celebrating the diversity of still life painting and sculpture, the prize seeks to award excellence and innovation in the genre. Now in its eighth year, the acquisitive prize is highly anticipated.
Nicole Kelly was selected for her stunning painting 'Orange Curtain'. Of the work Kelly states
‘Orange Curtain’ was painted in far west NSW at Fowlers Gap Research station while on a trip with my partner, our 20 month old son and 12 other artists.
The work celebrates the domestically that is particularly present at this time in our lives as well as speaks to the intimacy and juggle of working and living together with my family and the other artists in a semi-arid zone for a week.
The painting was created from life, a table of cluttered glasses and fruit on a wrap-around balcony at the research station that I shared as a temporary studio. Painted directly over an abstracted ground of multiple colours and shapes, I'm interested in weaving familiar representations into a field of colour and mark. Abstract shapes of coloured ground are left exposed, at times working to form imagery such as the orange curtain.
The exhibition of finalists will be on display at Yarrila Arts and Museum from 6 September to 9 November.
