Ben Quilty Whytie

Ben Quilty and Michael Whyte – or Whytie as he is known – have known each other since school days in the Hills District of Sydney. ‘Whytie is an old, old friend and a typical part of Windsor,’ says Quilty. ‘I’ve been making images about Australian culture for the last two years so Whytie really fits in as he’s very typical of working-class Australia and a well-known figure in Windsor. He’s a very sunburnt construction worker with green and blue tattoos down his arms. He’s a very red/white man, so there’s a bit of a pun to his name.’

The sittings for the portrait went well. ‘He’d never done anything like it before so he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the process,’ says Quilty. ‘But he very naturally sat in a pose that he felt comfortable with.’ Interestingly, Whytie, whose appreciation of art has grown over the past 10 years through is friendship with Quilty, is currently working on the construction of the Hawkesbury Art Gallery, about a kilometre from Quilty’s studio, which is in a disused pub.

The portrait was painted rapidly and was almost complete it two or three sittings. For the past two years, Quilty has been working with thick, slabbed-on oil paint and felt that it suited his subject. He used different mediums to help the paint dry. ‘Traditionally you use mediums to thin the paint or give it a translucent effect,’ he says. ‘I use them to help it dry quickly. If I don’t use them it takes 18 months to dry, if I do it takes six months.’

Born in Kenthurst in Sydney in 1973, Quilty graduated from the Sydney College of the Arts. He has exhibited paintings and photography. His work was shown in the Paris exhibition at the Step Gallery in 2001, the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship in 2002, the Torana exhibition at Maunsell Wickes Gallery in 2003, and the Metro 5 Art Prize in 2004. This is his first time in the Archibald Prize. He is also represented in the 2004 Wynne Prize.