Ann Thomson Portrait of the artist as a painting

‘I’d have been dismayed if anyone else had done that to me!’ quips sculptor, painter and teacher Ann Thomson about her self-portrait in this year’s Archibald. ‘But that’s the good thing about a self-portrait; you are not worrying about someone else’s opinion of it so I felt free to be the painter I am.’

Thomson’s large canvases reflect abstract, surrealistic and expressionistic influences, to which she brings a lyrical quality. Although her self-portrait is not an abstract painting, it uses big sweeps of paint and, she says, ‘felt quite dangerous at the time. I did all those big moves in one go so it’s very direct and fairly abstract. Certainly it’s about paint and about working in the studio. The collaged paper incorporated in the painting was the trigger for the self-portrait. What I want to show is the person as the painter – the experience of being an artist – and in doing so the artist and the painting become one.’

Born in Brisbane in 1933, Thomson studied under Jon Molvig in Brisbane then at the National Art School in Sydney where she now lives and works. She won the Wynne Prize in 1998 and is hung in this year’s Sulman Prize.