Every fold of the subject's shirt, the fall of hair across his face, the slight wry smile at the edge of his mouth; in capturing these, Coppersmith shows herself almost obsessively fixated with understanding her subject.
Coppersmith captured the attention of the contemporary Australian art scene in 2002 when, at the age of 22, she became the inaugural winner of the Metro 5 Art Award; at $40,000, the richest art award in the country for emerging artists.
She has since gone from strength to strength, being a finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2002, 2006 and 2007, and a finalist in the famed Archibald Portrait Prize in 2008 and again in 2009. Her recently completed portrait of Rupert Myer (TC 1976) will be one of several new portraits entering the College's art collections, and will be unveiled in the coming months with the return of the Dining Hall.
Painted across 2007–08 with intense realism, Forever in Blue Jeans illustrates the artist playing with the traditional roles of artist, sitter, and curatorial interpretation. Here, the sitter for her series is curator Mark Feary; no longer the enquirer but himself now the subject of the artist's – and our own – scrutiny and examination.
The series will be on display at College until the end of October.
