One artist's ability to capture the beauty of a moment before a storm has been recognised in a prestigious art award.
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Robertson artist Clara Adolphs' piece Christmas cloud, has been selected as a finalist in the Wynne Prize.
The annual prize recognises depictions of Australian landscapes across different mediums, and has been awarded to visual artists since 1897.
The former Archibald, Sulman and Glover Prize finalist, who has a passion for figurative paintings, was one of 34 finalists selected from 601 entries.
"I'm very happy, quite surprised," she said when she found out in May.
"I generally don't see myself as a landscape painter."
Christmas cloud depicts a distant cloud formation which Ms Adolphs noticed then photographed, when she was on the road on Christmas Day to Sydney in 2021.
She said a "storm was brewing" on the day.
The artist painted a series of clouds in a previous exhibition in backgrounds of other paintings, before she decided to showcase them in all of their glory.
"I found they really do stand alone and they are quite interesting within themselves," she said.
"Clouds have an interesting way about them... [they are] constantly changing."
Whether it is a picture she has taken herself, or old ones bought in bulk that she rummages through to find one that "speak[s] to her", Ms Adolphs always wants to draw on a photo to tell a story.
"I'm always searching for photographs," she said.
"[I want to] capture that moment and recreate the moments in paint [of] what's a former record..."
Another distinct method for the painter is working quickly "wet-on-wet", and creating multiple versions of a work before she decides on which one is the best.
Several were painted before she settled on this particular depiction of a Cumulus congestus cloud.
The size of the work, which exceeds two metres in length and width, is another common practice for the Robertson local.
"The viewer is more immersed and as a painter, I am more immersed," she said.
Ms Adolphs' finesse has seen her be named as a finalist on several occasions in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Mosman Prize, Portia Geach Award, Salon de Refusés, Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and Metro Art Award.
Her work has also been awarded the Fourth Village Young Emerging Artist Award, the Bowral Indoor Sculpture Prize, highly commended in the Bowral and District Art Society's Young Artist Prize in 2017, and second in Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery's Outback Art Prize among other accolades.
She has held exhibitions across the country in major and regional cities and has been an artist in residence in Australia, New York and Paris.
You can see Clara's piece until August 28 in the Art Gallery of NSW along with the Archibald Prize and Sir John Sulman Prize exhibitions.
Clara's previous works can be seen on http://www.claraadolphs.com/.
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Briannah Devlin
I like to write about arts, entertainment, any local reality tv leads, and property for the Southern Highland News and Goulburn Post, but also report on everything in between. If you have any tips, please send them to Briannah.Devlin@austcommunitymedia.com.au, or call 0439142204.
I like to write about arts, entertainment, any local reality tv leads, and property for the Southern Highland News and Goulburn Post, but also report on everything in between. If you have any tips, please send them to Briannah.Devlin@austcommunitymedia.com.au, or call 0439142204.
