People’s Choice Winner
Advocate Art Award 2021
Emma Stuart – “Kwartatuma in Shadow”
Winner of the People’s Choice vote in the Advocate Art Award
Prize Sponsored by Yeperenye Shopping Centre
This painting came out of a series focusing around regeneration of the land through fire. The Central Desert has been part of me for over 25 years now. After living in Berlin I returned to Mparntwe in 2014 to continue my art practice.
Since then I have been gripped Arrernte country’s vibrant geographical and demographical history and am drawn to paint its evocative landscapes. In particular its river-beds, clay pans and tributaries and their ever-present company, the trees.
My aim is to capture the liminal shift between light and shade, between what is revealed and what is hidden, between the point of focus and distorted peripheries. Instead of focusing on broad vistas typically depicted by Central Australian landscape painters, I am drawn to paint intimate scapes, the personalities of the individual trees and their journeys through the different seasons and conditions bared upon it by the Australian desert’s harsh climate.
I’d like to thank CAAS for curating an art prize that is so open and inclusive.
