Nicholas Harding Rusty Peters

It was touch-and-go as to what Nicholas Harding – the winner of last year’s Archibald Prize for his portrait of John Bell – would enter this year.

Born under a Warlagarri or Supplejack tree on Springwood Station, south-west of Turkey Creek, Rusty Peters is a senior Gija painter and songman. He was a founding member of the art school at Turkey Creek with other senior Gija artists. Whilst still recognisably part of that school, his paintings with their intricate curves mapping the country around Springvale have a style that is distinctively his.

Harding met Peters in September last year when he went to the Kimberley region of Western Australia on an artist-in-residence program with Sydney’s Grantpirrie Gallery. Peters had started work on a large painting called Waterbrain. ‘I felt an empathy with Rusty,’ says Harding. ‘He is a very sweet, quiet man and, working on his painting, he felt the same kind of anxiety that any artist feels when visitors come to their studio.’

Harding sketched and photographed Peters as he worked, then returned to Sydney where he set to work on a portrait. However, when Peters came to Sydney for the unveiling of Waterbrain at Grantpirrie, he popped into Harding’s studio ‘and as soon as I saw him I knew the portrait was all wrong. I hadn’t painted him black enough,’ says Harding.

Ditching the portrait as his Archibald entry, he set to work on a self-portrait. ‘But then I thought, if I’m going to paint Rusty, it’s now or never,’ says Harding. ‘When I drew him in Kununurra he wasn’t really aware of me and so he was relaxed but sitting for me later in Sydney he was shy, awkward and uncomfortable and I think that comes through in the portrait.’

Born in London in 1956, Harding came to Australia in 1965. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1975, travelled through Europe then returned to Australia to a career as an animator, illustrator and painter. He has had regular solo exhibitions at Rex Irwin Gallery in Sydney since 1992 and a solo exhibition in London in 1997. He has been hung in the Archibald Prize on eight previous occasions. His portrait of Margaret Olley was highly commended in 1998 and he last year he won the Archibald Prize and the Dobell Drawing Prize.