Bill Hay Allan Mitelman

Artist and teacher Allan Mitelman was the subject of an Archibald Prize winning portrait by Lewis Miller in 1998 and has featured in several other Archibald entries.

Bill Hay has known Mitelman for around 20 years, having met him whilst studying as a post-graduate student at the Victorian College of the Arts, but has never painted him before. This painting comes from a series of portraits, all featuring multiple images of the subject – “because people have more than one aspect to them,” says Hay. In each he uses a word or the subject’s name and then bends the figures into the shape of the letters.

“Allan likes music and whisky. He reads and paints. He is an artist, humourist, guitarist, card player, grandfather, teacher and bon vivant. He is all of these things,” says Hay. “I knew him well enough that all it needed was a few drawings done over a drink. The idea was to try and have fun with the portrait. So often you see these rather dour descriptions of people so I was trying to bring a bit of life back into it.”

Born in Melbourne in 1956, Hay studied Fine Art at RMIT and the VCA. He was a finalist in the Archibald Prize in 1988, 1989 and 1990 but then stopped painting portraits for some years. “I only enter paintings if they are part of what I’m currently working on,” he says.