Lower Hutt artist Stacey Hughes has won the IHC Art Awards 2011 and $5000 for a powerful portrait with a 'Mona Lisa' smile.

Lower Hutt artist Stacey Hughes has won the IHC Art Awards 2011 and $5000 for a powerful portrait with a 'Mona Lisa' smile.

The winners were picked from the top 30 entries submitted to regional competitions by Christchurch children’s author Margaret Mahy, Auckland sculptor Brett Graham and Dunedin printmaker Olav Nielsen. Prizes were presented at a gala night at the St James Theatre in Wellington last week.

Margaret Mahy and Olav Nielsen both commented on the mysterious half-smile. “I think it is a powerful painting – and haunting too. It is a great painting,” Margaret said. “Art does not flow out of intellectual capacity but out of an emotional response that people have to the world.”

Olav said he liked the way the figure was looking at something out of the corner of her eye that we can’t see – “a bit like the Mona Lisa”.

“I found it an arresting work. It definitely caught my eye. I think it’s got that lovely sense of mystery,” Olav said.

Inspired by a photo

Stacey, 41, is the first Wellington winner of the national competition, which started in 2004 to showcase the talents of people with intellectual disabilities. Stacey says her winning portrait was inspired by a photo in a magazine. She can’t remember who was in the photo but it may have been a rock star.

The chalk pastel on paper portrait is a departure from her usual subjects, which have favoured animals and landscapes. But facial expressions and colour are the focus of a lot of her recent work.
 
She has been attending art workshops for only the past five years – at the Hutt Valley Disabled Resources Trust and Take 5 & Te Whare Marama in Lower Hutt – but spends as much time as she can drawing and painting, says her mother, Eileen Hughes.

A warm celebration

Richard Benge, Executive Director, Arts Access Aotearoa, said that despite the cold weather, the awards ceremony was a warm celebration of artists and art from throughout New Zealand.

“These awards reflect the exceptional support and artistic opportunities that entrants, winners and finalists receive from creative spaces based in cities and towns from Southland to Northland,” he said.

Second place went to Paul Sedgwick, who works from Sandz Gallery in Hamilton, for Auckland Phonebook Goes to Milford – a series of notes on a board.

Paul is fascinated with maps, street names, television guides and emergency services. The notes are a collection of words that he has used over the past 18 months, grouped to satisfy his sense of order. He has won $2000.

Third-equal prizes of $1000 were awarded to Denise Dennehy, Alpha Art Studio, Wellington, with a 3D work, Blue and White Pills Going Up the Right Way, inspired by a Lotto spinning wheel, and Jamie McCullough, Avalon Incorporated, Katikati, for a paper and cardboard sculpture, Ace, inspired by video games.

The awards are open to all New Zealanders with an intellectual disability. This year 362 artists entered. The artists receive 100 percent of the sale price for their works.

The art works can be viewed on www.ihcartawards.co.nz/gallery