Art awards announced

Press, 9 May 1984, Page 18

Art awards announced

Auckland artists have won first and second prizes in the $6500 Montana Wines Art Award, with third prize going to a Wanganui artist. Jane Zusters took the first prize of $3OOO with her painting “Vado Italia,” a semi-abstract scene featuring a small boat on an azure sea. Second prize of $2OOO went to lan Scott of Balmoral with his abstract “Vermilion Light,” which uses flashes of green, blue and yellow on a bright orange ground, and third prize was won by Michael Haggie of Wanganui with his landscape “The Junction,” a painting which features a road junction set against rolling hills. Merit awards for Montana wines worth $lOO went to: Rob Taylor of Plimmerton for his abstract “Portal”; Graham Snowden of ParnelL Auckland, untitled abstract; photo-realist Paul McKay of Lower Hutt “Bill and the Kestrel”; and Steve Harris of Dunedin for his study of a warped table called “Time Twister.” A

fifth painting with a similar prize will be selected by the public at the exhibition. A total of 406 entries were received for this, the tenth year of the Montana

Wines Art Award, and the judge John Coley of the Robert MacDougall Art Gallery in Christchurch was impressed by the strength of the many works from

artists who were completely unknown to him. But, he said, many of the artists lacked a commitment to their work, which was “too elaborate and pretentious.”