Dobell Drawing Prize Winner

Rebecca Varidel
28th Mar 2021

The National Art School is pleased to announce Euan Macleod as the winner of the Dobell Drawing Prize #22, chosen by guest judge Lucy Culliton from 64 finalists, for his pastel on paper work Borderlands - Between NSW and QLD. Euan receives the $30,000 prize and his work will enter the National Art School Collection.

“In Australia COVID has (among many other things) made us aware of borders that had seemed not much more than lines on a map. Shutting the borders reminds us how much these lines can separate people, something rarely seen in Australia, but becoming even more common globally. This series of drawings were done during a brief opening of the border between Queensland and New South Wales in July last year. All of them were drawn on the spot as we travelled backwards and forwards. I like the idea of assembling them together in no particular order, the parts adding to a unified whole” Macleod stated in the artist statement accompanying his winning entry.

Well-known as a painter, Euan has won many art prizes in Australia, including the Archibald in 1999, the Sulman Prize in 2001, the Blake Prize in 2006, the NSW Parliament’s inaugural Plein Air painting prize in 2008, the Tattersall’s Landscape Prize in 2000 and 2009, the Gallipoli Art Prize in 2009, and the King’s School Art Prize in 2011.

“I’m really wrapped, it’s bloody fantastic!” Euan said after receiving a call from NAS Director and CEO Steven Alderton to inform him of the win.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever been hung in the Dobell, I’ve entered a few times before."

“These drawings are what I always do when I go away on holidays, and people don’t expect it because I’m known for my painting. These are in relationship to Covid, I did all the drawings in that area between the two states. We were going backwards and forwards over the border with the army there, it was quite an amazing experience."

Euan has held more than 50 solo shows in New Zealand and Australia and taken part in numerous group exhibitions in Australasia and internationally, and his work is represented in many private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York. He shows at King Street Gallery on William in Sydney, Niagara Gallery in Melbourne, Victor Mace Fine Art Gallery in Brisbane, and Bowen Galleries in Wellington, New Zealand.

Originally from New Zealand, Euan moved to Sydney in 1981 and is now based in the inner west.

Pictured: Euan Macleod in his studio, photo by Andrew Merry