Australian Award To Artist

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31461, 30 August 1967, Page 2

Australian Award To Artist

A Christchurch artist, Mrs Vy Elsom, has won the water-colour section of the Redcliffe Art Contest, Brisbane. Her winning entry was a landscape of Lake Hayes.

Two other pictures she submitted were 1 among 267 selected ] for hanging in an ex- i hibition held in association with the con- 1 test.

More than 450 entries were received for the competition, which was held in four sections. They came from Britain, California, Borneo, Italy, New Zealand and Australia. Mrs Elspm’s prize is SAIOS. "The prize is of small monetary value; the rewarding factor to me is that the competition was judged by William Dargie, an internationallyknown portrait artist, whose work I have always admired very much,” Mrs Elsom said yesterday. This is the first time Mrs Elsom has entered a contest outside New Zealand. She very nearly changed her mind about submitting work for this one. “I found there were so many difficulties about sending pictures away—the airfreighting, the special packing and the need to make sure that someone would collect them at the other end— I very nearly gave up the whole idea,” she said. In New Zealand she has received merit awards in the Dawson Hallmark contest, Auckland.

Best known as a portrait painter, Mrs Elsom took up water-colour landscapes only in recent years. “I enjoy doing landscapes tn water-colours because I can get a quick impression on the spot, even if I decide to do an oil from them later,” she said yesterday. "When I am doing children’s portraits I find it easier to keep them happy and contented doing them quickly in watercolours rather than in oils.” Mrs Elsom does sketches for "The Press” under the pen-name “Eve.” She is a council member of the Canterbury Society of Arts and an elected member of the New Zealand Academy of Arts.

Born in Australia as Vy Chaffey, Mrs Elsom studied at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London. Working under scholarships, she specialised in figure painting and portraiture. Her teachers included Cosmo Clark, Randolph Schawbe and John Gilroy. She exhibited in London with the South London Group.

For a few years she designed book jackets and did magazine illustrations for the publishing firm of Hodder and Stoughton. When She came to New Zealand her interest in art was channelled into fashion drawing for the D.I.C. and for Beaths, Christchurch. Mr and Mrs Elsom have a son and a daughter. Their son, Mr Jonathan Elsom, is a television and stage actor in London; their daughter, a nurse, is Mrs Elisabeth Armstrong, of Dunedin.