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The Prize
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The Joan Purves Encouragement Prize is an annual $2,500 cash prize awarded to an eligible student attending an art class at the Waverley-Woollahra Art School on Bondi Road.
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Each year the Art School will appoint a suitably qualified panel to determine who will be the recipient of the prize for that year. The prize will be announced and presented to the recipient at the End Of Year Art Exhibition awards’ night in December each year.
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The purpose of the prize is to recognise an artist who shows great promise and commitment in their chosen media (2D oils, acrylic, watercolour, mixed media, printmaking, life drawing, pastels, ink and charcoal but excluding sculpture and ceramics).
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The awarding of the prize will recognise the student who shows the highest artistic promise and flair while encouraging lifelong participation in art practice.
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Further details about eligibility and awarding criteria can be found on Waverley-Woollahra Art School’s website by clicking here
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The prize will be awarded each year in perpetuity.
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For details of The Joan Purves Art Trust, click here
2024 prize winner Brad Franks
Firstly, I would like to thank the Joan Purves Art Trust; the 2024 Prize Judge Julie Parkin; Waverley Woollahra Art School and painting and drawing Tutor Philippa Hagon for making me the recipient of the 2024 Joan Purves Encouragement Prize. It is a great honour.
I have been fortunate over the course of my life to have been able to pursue both a working life and a private life that has, more often than not, connected with my love of the arts. Support has often come from unexpected quarters and attending an art school such as the Waverley Woollahra Art School (WWAS) over the past eighteen months has been an exciting and unexpected joy.
The atmosphere within the old Bondi-Waverley School of Arts building on Bondi Road is one of camaraderie and creativity, with students attending from all walks of life and at all skill levels while the building itself wraps you in a cocoon of old world bohemia and dishevelled comfort, just as an art school should. The dusty classical busts, the examples of previous students and tutors work, the coming and going of the dance classes, the wonderful resource that is the school’s library and the friendliness of staff, committee members and tutors creates an environment that encourages both learning and experimentation.
I was thrilled to learn that Joan Purves had been involved in the establishment of WWAS in 1968 and that it had grown out of that marvellous and optimistic movement of the late 1960’s to make art training and appreciation available to all. In WWAS I have found a studio and class room where I feel supported and safe to investigate my own creative urge and the resources to draw upon to take that urge somewhere worthwhile.
Secondly, I would like to make an artist’s statement concerning my work over the past eighteen months at WWAS.
It had been my hope in attending WWAS that I would find my “mojo” and reconnect with the creativity that I felt had been on hold for the past twenty years. Following the late flowering of a career in arts administration which included eleven years as the Director of the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre and a stint on the board of Regional and Public Galleries NSW, I had found myself, apart from a practitioner’s interest in photography, feeling rather stifled with regards to other forms of artistic practice.
​At WWAS I found not only the supportive environment mentioned above but an excellent tutor in the painting and drawing class, Philippa Hagon. Philippa was instrumental in bringing out my creativity and improving and honing my skills. In particular, Philippa encouraged me to work on sequences, on pictorial narratives, on examining an idea in depth.
Beginning in 2023 with a series of relatively straight forward landscapes based on photographs I had taken on Hampstead Heath, I developed my confidence in the use of drawing materials: crayon, pastel and charcoal. During 2024 I expanded on these materials to include ink, water colour and acrylic, thereby reintroducing colour into my work.
The major breakthrough for me though was to decide to tackle a more personal and pressing matter: examining my own family history. The relationship of that history to the social history that it exists within and how that has affected my own life. This was partly a result of the barren desolation I felt in my reaction to the No vote following The Voice to Parliament Referendum in October 2023.
As a suburban Sydney-bred Aboriginal with a mixed heritage Dharug, Scottish, Irish and German (including a couple of “First Fleet” convicts), the re-establishment of the “status quo” encompassed in the No vote is something that demands to be reckoned with. My work conducted at Waverley Woollahra during 2024 is part of that reckoning. My choice has been to take my family history and place it centre stage in my art. To quote Carol Hanisch from her famous 1969 essay: “The personal is political”.
With a working title of “In Plain Sight” my investigation of this theme will continue.
The 2024 Joan Purves Encouragement Prize has helped immensely by doing exactly as it says: encouraging.
Brad Franks
January 2025
In the garden (my grandmother) 2024
pastel on paper
59 x 42cm
Ask the Angels/While they're Falling (1997)
acrylic, charcoal and enamel on canvas
211 x 172cm​
David Serisier at 271 (from The Alcohol Series) 1986
ink on paper
54 x 86cm​
Nude, East Sydney 1978
silver gelatin photographic print on paper
8.5 x 6cm​
Portrait of Andrew Frazer, Eastwood Station 1973
silver gelatin photographic print on paper
20 x 20cm​
2023 - no prize awarded
2022 prize winner Anika Zeman
Anika Zeman says her lifelong love of poetry and literature has opened up a whole new world of opportunities and possibilities as she attempts to transfer those vivid images in her mind to the canvas.
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Anika, the 2022 recipient of the Joan Purves Encouragement Prize, has always had a passion for poetry and literature from Manga fantasy and science fiction – including Japanese animator, director and Manga artist Hayao Miyazaki – through to fantasy illustrator Richard Doyle and on to Dali.
“We read all these highly descriptive passages in books, in poems and plays and we instantly create images in our minds of what the author is depicting, but we can each have a unique take on what the writer was describing,” Anika said.
“There’s literally no limit on what you’re able to express on the canvas, and that’s become a passion for me.”
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She also has a love of Japanese sumi-e painting and ukiyo-e woodblock prints for their peacefulness and tranquillity.
Anika first joined WWAS tutor Yaeli Ohana’s class and then Lisa McKimmie’s class having only dabbled in art as a hobby at school.
“I was a bit apprehensive about enrolling in formal art classes at first but the openness and friendliness of my tutors and fellow classmates made it so easy and accessible, without any pressure. I became addicted to those classes very quickly!”
“There is such a sense of fun and humour in class. We’re treated as equals. It’s all so welcoming and brings the best out in students as we tap into our tutor’s vast knowledge.”
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“Lisa and Yaeli gave me the feeling of absolute freedom to explore and express whatever I wanted to do in my art with no limits, but with the structure and required technique. They also impart the historical knowledge which is so absorbing,” Anika said.
Anika was particularly enthused by an experiment Lisa conducted with students in which she described a painting that was before her and the students had to paint it based on her spoken description only, without seeing the artwork. “Everyone’s imagination is different and the results were really interesting,” Anika said.
“I had the same feeling about Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream which has been subject to many great artists’ impressions and representations. But what sort of fairies do I think Shakespeare was describing? It’s limitless and truly exciting.”
Anika was chosen from 10 student artists nominated for this year’s prize which includes the $2,500 cash prize. Judge Ashley Frost said of Anika and her work: “I was struck by the intuitive use of colour and the playful application of pattern - somewhat reminiscent of Matisse - but retaining a unique stylistic approach. Anika’s work displays a confidence in the execution of composition and the variety of mark making in the work. The other determining factor in awarding the prize was Anika’s strong commitment to her practice in trying out different media including watercolour and acrylics.”
Anika praised her school English teacher for opening up the literary world to her along with dance, music, art and poetry.
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“I’m now tossing up which class or classes I join next year!”
Prize winner Anika Zeman at the
2022 WWAS awards' night
Anika said she felt so honoured to win the prize and thanked the Purves family for sponsoring the prize.
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“The world of art is so rich and I feel so privileged being a part of this wonderful journey,” Anika said.
After Hasui Kawase 2022 by Anika Zeman
Sunset trees 2022 by Anika Zeman
Thoughts 2022 by Anika Zeman
First movement 2022 by Anika Zeman
The fairy’s moon 2022 by Anika Zeman
2021 - no prize awarded due to Covid-19
2020 prize winner Sharan Daly
“My interest in art began as a teenager when I saw some beautiful books on Renaissance Art at school in Woolwich. My early years, until I was seven, were lived at Bondi Beach,” said Sharan Daly, the winner of the 2020 Joan Purves Encouragement Prize.
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Art has always been important to Sharan who’s amassed a fine collection of art books and visited many of the world’s best galleries, with a particular focus on abstract expressionists.
“I love the German expressionists and was captivated by Gustav Klimpt’s Gold Phase when I visited the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna. And Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s works at the Brücke Museum in Berlin. I can’t get enough of them - Heckel, Bleyl, Schmidt-Rottluff, Nolde and Mueller.”
“I’m very fond of abstract artists Elisabeth Cummings, Cressida Campbell, Euan Macleod, Charmaine Pike and Nicholas Harding. North American Artists that inspire me include Lee Krasner and the Bay Area Artists.”
When her career and family commitments became less onerous, Sharan took lessons from teacher Gary Foy for several years before joining Philippa Hagon’s classes at WWAS five years ago.
“I was initially attracted to a class Pip [Philippa] ran titled ‘Towards Abstraction’. Her extensive knowledge of the broader art world was illuminating, making the journey all the more interesting, challenging and always exciting.”
“Pip’s classes are wonderful and she’s a marvellous tutor, constantly giving students individual tips on which painters to look into for pointers on style and technique. Not to copy anyone but to look for inspiration and alternatives in what they’ve done. It’s a very personal, individual approach which helps you move on and up to the next level.
“I have the great fortune to live beside a large house with a beautiful garden. I would pull up the blinds in the morning and see this long leaf of brilliant gold tucked among the vibrant green foliage of a banana tree and think to myself that is so beautiful I must paint it and I did paint it with much pleasure [Borrowed Landscape].
“My painting titled Balls Head came about when Pip took the class to do some plein air painting at Balls Head, a bushland reserve surrounded by water on the northside of the harbour. I did some rough watercolour sketches and photographed an area of bush with a background of a large rock face. This view appealed to me as it was unusual and I decided to try and capture it in paint,” Sharan said.
Pip says Sharan’s works “don’t necessarily take the easy path of the beautiful, being at times difficult, curious, humorous and sometimes ‘quite strange’. But always with an honesty and integrity, probing her sensibility, skill and subject matter. Her works are open, fresh and experimental allowing the paintings to evolve through a conversation between subject and aesthetic considerations: composition, colour and marks put down in each work.”
Sharan was selected from those students nominated by WWAS’ tutors and chosen by independent judges Peter Griffen, Sydney artist; and Alison Clark, Arts & Culture Coordinator North Sydney Council.
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Borrowed Landscape by Sharan Daly
Balls Head by Sharan Daly
After Giotto by Sharan Daly
David Purves presents Sharan Daly with her certificate for winning the 2020 Joan Purves Encouragment Prize at WWAS in early December 2020 (Joan Purves' Still Life With Flowers painting is in the centre). Prize winners receive a cheque for $2,500 from The Joan Purves Art Trust.
2019 prize winner Margie Waugh
Margie Waugh is the 2019 recipient of the Joan Purves Encouragement Prize of $2,500 announced at the End of Year Art Exhibition at the Waverley Woollahra Art School (WWAS) on 12 December 2019.
Margie, who grew up near Parkes in central west NSW and now lives in the southern highlands, features the Australian bush and vistas in many of her works such as The Gorge.
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“I’m a country girl with her own Girl’s Shed where I can paint and do my wirework to my heart’s content,” Margie said in an interview conducted in April 2020.
“I was always painting at school and have painted all my life.”
Before enrolling at WWAS five years ago, Margie attended art classes in Willoughby and Balmain. In addition to her WWAS painting class each week, she had been attending Willemina Villari’s wirework class until it was suspended due to coronavirus.
In 2018 Margie won First Prize for Acrylics at WWAS’ end of year students’ show for her work titled Centennial Park.
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“A sketch book is never far from me wherever I go and I just couldn’t understand some of my friends who kept saying how bored they were during the coronavirus lockdown. You can never be bored when you can just whip out your sketch book and away you go, sketching what’s in front of you right there and then or recalling a vista from your mind,” Margie said.
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After the Fires is a collage Margie completed before Christmas 2019 and before the fires hit southern NSW on New Year’s Eve: “While the recent fires burned right up to our front fence, drought and bushfires were never far away from me during my childhood so I could recall vividly how the bush looked and smelled after a fire had ravaged it.”
Margie praised the group camaraderie under tutor Annabel Butler. She said Annabel makes her virtual classes so interesting and absorbing: “We have a marvellous group of students and while using the technology for virtual classes was a little daunting at first for some people, WWAS’ administrator Courtney Kynaston is a tech-whizz and provided wonderfully helpful guidance on how to use the technology so people could continue with their classes online and get the most out of the experience.”
“With up to 14 participants on-screen at any one time, all in their little windows, we can chat or put the class on mute while we work. And at the end of each class Annabel puts our works into a PowerPoint file and we all look and listen to Annabel critiquing the pieces we’ve just been working on. The engagement is marvellous.”
Margie said winning the prize was completely unexpected but a wonderful thrill.
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“It’s given me a boost to keep working with renewed energy and not let those overworked canvases defeat me!”
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The judges said of Margie’s art: “Her works are both competent and expressive in terms of style and technique, yet they possess a lovely subtle individuality which, with further studies, will ensure this artist continues to develop. We congratulate Margie and look forward to seeing what comes next.”
Margie was selected from those students nominated by WWAS’ tutors and chosen by independent judges Peter Griffen, Sydney artist; and Alison Clark, Arts & Culture Coordinator North Sydney Council. The judges also awarded a Highly Commended award to Karine Boulanger.
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The Gorge by Margie Waugh
Centennial Park by Margie Waugh
After the Fires by Margie Waugh
“I just enjoy labouring away with my canvases, so the prize was not only an acknowledgement but it was of great personal encouragement to me,” she said.
“I am grateful to the Purves family for recognising the positive role art plays in the lives of amateur artists where a word of encouragement can mean so much.
2019 winner Margie Waugh
receives her certificate
Vessel by Margie Waugh
2018 prize winner Catherine Boardman
Catherine Boardman won the 2018 Joan Purves Encouragement Prize of $2,500 at the annual prize night for the End of Year Art Exhibition at Waverley Woollahra Art School (WWAS) on 13 December 2018.
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constantly challenging herself by stepping out of her comfort zone with a willingness to try new approaches and take risks which has greatly benefited her work.
“Over this year there has been a remarkable distillation of form and colour in Catherine’s paintings. Her preparation for every class is first rate and she often re-works paintings outside class time until she’s satisfied with the results,” Annabel said.
“Catherine’s enthusiasm also sees her take other painting workshops and she'd like to find a studio so she can further develop her painting practice,” Annabel said.
Catherine said she was thrilled to win the prize and while the prize money was a bonus, it was the recognition of tutors and judges in choosing her works that made it all the more special.
Catherine Boardman was selected from nominated WWAS students by judges Peter Griffen, Sydney artist: www.petergriffen.com and Sam Dickerson, Director Dickerson Gallery Queen Street Woollahra: www.dickersongallery.com.au
Sydneysider Catherine has been painting almost all her life but in the last few years took up formal tuition at WWAS.
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Catherine won a highly commended award in the 2017 9x5 Landscape Prize at WWAS and has continued to develop and hone her skills. Catherine’s tutor Annabel Butler said Catherine is one of her most dedicated students,
Catherine Boardman
Mother's Chair by Catherine Boardman
Figs by Catherine Boardman
Artists, friends and tutors packed the auditorium for the 2018 prize night at WWAS
2017 inaugural winner . . .
Joe Manifold was announced the recipient of the inaugural Joan Purves Encouragement Prize of $2,500 at the annual prize-giving presentation for the End of Year Art Exhibition at Waverley Woollahra Art School on 7 December 2017.
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Originally hailing from Dublin Ireland, Joe now calls Millers Point in Sydney home although he’s still keen on international travel.
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While Joe was astonished he’d won, Joe’s tutor Josh McPherson praised his dedication and ability to push himself to execute great works. A fellow student said Joe was an asset to the class, was always positive and “really knows his stuff”.
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Joe was selected from nominated art school students by judges Peter Hickey, Sydney artist, and Sam Dickerson, Director Dickerson Gallery Queen Street Woollahra. For further details on the 2017 Art Exhibition winners click here
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"Untitled" by Joe Manifold
Joe Manifold
From left to right: 2017 Joan Purves Encouragement Prize winner Joe Manifold receiving his certificate from David Purves while judge Peter Hickey and WWAS Board Member Robert Enemark applaud his efforts. Painting at right: Still Life with Flowers by Joan Purves