Rodney Pople Head study - Richard Goodwin

Richard Goodwin is a prominent Sydney sculptor and architect. This painting of him by his friend Rodney Pople was executed from life in three days over three half-hour sittings. Between sittings, Pople worked only on the painting’s background, ensuring a quality of immediacy in the subject’s face. He has portrayed the sitter not as a decapitated head, but as a sculpture presented on a pedestal, as an object d’art.

Pople was born in Launceston in 1952. He did a Diploma of Fine Arts (Photography) at the Tasmanian School of Art and postgraduate studies in sculpture at the Slade School of Art in London and the New York Studio School. This is his second portrait to be selected for the Archibald.