Esther Erlich Tim

Tim Rogers is lead singer of the Australian band You Am I and also a solo artist. He won a 1999 ARIA award for best male artist for his album What rhymes with cars and girls? He composed the soundtrack for the 2002 film Dirty deeds, in which he made a cameo appearance, then made his television acting debut in 2005 in an episode of MDA. In 2005 he released a double album with the Temperance Union, and last year he formed TNT with Tex Perkins, releasing an album.

Esther Erlich decided to paint the ‘amiable rock star’ upon her daughter’s suggestion. Erlich was initially drawn to her subject because of his ‘striking, expressive features and notable sense of style’.

Busy performing and recording music, Rogers’ busy schedule meant that Erlich had only one – albeit long – sitting in which to paint him. ‘I found him to be incredibly engaging and, by the end of the session, he had become very animated, so the great difficulty painting Tim wasn’t finding a pose that I wanted to capture but rather trying to choose which one.’
Erlich added the extra panel to the bottom of the portrait quite late in the process, deciding that the existing span of canvas wouldn’t do her lanky subject justice. ‘If I could do it over, I would make sure I’d completed the top part of the painting before I made it longer’, she says. ‘I spent a lot of time up a ladder!’

Born in Melbourne in 1955, Erlich won the Archibald People’s Choice in 2000 for her portrait of Bill Leak. This is her fourth time as an Archibald finalist. She won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 1998.