Caroline Zilinsky Kubla Khan

Popular contestants Mitch Edwards and Mark McKie won Channel Nine’s reality home-renovation show The block in 2021.

Drawn to their ‘vivacity and immaculate style’, Caroline Zilinsky sketched them in their homewares store in the Sydney suburb of Newport, as shoppers gathered around to watch. ‘It was a nerve-racking contrast to my usually solitary sittings,’ she says.

Zilinsky named the painting after Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, written in an opium-induced haze, in which he imagines an exotic palace – which was how she felt, entering the world of the flamboyant couple.

‘I use patterns in my work to mimic the patterns one makes in one’s life, so when I met Mitch and Mark the work almost painted itself. After being together for 18 years, they work in such tandem they almost become one in the portrait, says Zilinsky, a first-time Archibald finalist. ‘I also use a method of etching into the canvas, as though the image is carving out its own existence.’

‘On the evening the portrait was completed, my ceiling gave way from heavy rain and I cried because I thought the painting might be lost forever – but thankfully oil and water don’t mix.’