10-year-old Ezra Jones won the Endeavour Lions Youth Award prize with a vibrant and colourful horse painting. Photo: Supplied.
From the bright innocence of a child’s mind, to the dark despair of the region’s worst flooding disaster, the Elizabeth Guzsely Gallery is full of Cooktown’s stories after the 46th Cooktown Annual Art Award opened on 19 June.
Themed My Country, artists of the community brought their best works forward to judges Ian McRae and Jennifer Young in hopes of winning a prize across painting, works on paper, photography, Indigenous, sculpture, and the Endeavour Lions Youth Award categories.
Age 8-13 Youth Award winner Ezra Jones, who presented a vibrant and colourful painting of a horse, won the Art Award for the second time.
“I love drawing horses, dogs, fish, chickens and lots of other animals,” the 10-year-old said.
“I felt happy and excited, and it encouraged me to continue with art.”
Showcasing a completely different human experience was painting category winner Jane Dennis, whose blood-red ground and characters hanging from trees depicted the hurt and darkness felt by the community during the Tropical Cyclone Jasper flood event in late 2023.
“It’s a very emotional painting in the sense that even the people who weren’t physically affected by the flood, the whole town was basically emotionally affected,” she said.
“I certainly had friends who suffered, and I just kind of wanted to do something, to make a record of that sadness, as weird as that sounds.”
Ms Dennis, who is also the president of the Cooktown School of Art Society, said she hoped to be an inspiration for other artists in town to experiment with various styles.
“Most people enjoy a safe picture that doesn’t threaten them, but art’s different, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do with this gallery, is to accept all forms of art,” she said.
“The quality of work in the three years I’ve been here has just risen, and locals have been commenting on that.
“It’s important to create a space where people feel confident to bring whatever they make in without being judged, because once you get your painting out of your studio and put it on the wall, it just transforms into something else.”
Results
Works on Paper: Joanne Davies 1, Diana Burns 2; Painting: Jane Dennis 1, Jane Auld 2; Indigenous (adult): Helen Gordon 1; Indigenous (youth): Tilahani Michaels 1; Sculpture: Rachael Morgan 1, Suzi Dela Rue 2; Youth Award (8-13): Ezra Jones 1, Alira Auld 2; Youth Award (14-18): Tilahani Michaels; Photography: Jen Young 1; Gisela Whithear 2
Painting category winner Jane Dennis depicted the hurt and darkness felt by the community in the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Jasper. Photo: Chisa Hasegawa.
