We are incredibly proud and excited for our three well deserved John Leslie Art Prize Finalists. To familiarise you with their works in the lead up to the prize, we have asked each artist to write a small piece about their practice, and their piece that has been selected.
Debbie Mackenzie is one of the most exciting emerging artists painting in Victoria, and holds a sell-out exhibition annually at Manyung Gallery Malvern.
“I feel most content, calm and complete in the natural world, in particular places where the sky is big and the land is vast. I am in awe of how beautiful the World is, its power……. and then conversely, how insignificant we are. The older I get the more important this seems to be.
In an effort to equalise all the technology and the frenetics technology brings, I find myself needing and wanting to express my desire for what I love in the landscape and the comfort I find there. This particular piece for the John Leslie Prize portrays nature, its forces and the scale to civilization. The John Leslie Prize holds a very important place in my heart. With both sides of my family born and raised in Gippsland, I feel very much at home there.”
Debbie's available work can be viewed here