USQ lecturer impresses art critics

A USQ academic has received one of the highest honours in the Australian art world.

Toowoomba-based artist Damien Kamholtz, an art lecturer and former USQ student, was recently named a 2010 finalist in the prestigious Sulman Prize competition for his work entitled, Breath.

The Sulman Prize, held annually at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in conjunction with the Archibald and Wynne Prizes, attracts talented emerging artists from around the country.

Mr Kamholtz said Breath had been created as part of his Pink Blues Exhibition, which was held at ArtHouse Gallery in Sydney in 2009.

'The exhibition was a series of works created to illustrate a short story I had written called Egon and the Blue Horse – the boy who believed,' Mr Kamholtz said.

The story, in abstracted narrative, chronicles the experiences of a small boy’s discovery as he attempts to capture a wild horse.

'The horse in the story is designed to be a metaphor for that ‘something’ that everybody seeks,' Mr Kamholtz said.

'For me personally, Blue Horse represents inspiration and at times, illusive resolve to a painting that an artist seeks.'

The story describes how the young boy grows to be a man still in constant pursuit until one day, as an old man, he captures the horse.

'I wanted Breath to illustrate that moment of transformation - that excited moment in the story where the man finally captures the horse, only to find it transformed in capture into something else.

'I wanted to capture the excited moment when inspiration arrives to an artist.'

Mr Kamholtz said all of his works demonstrated a certain ambiguity that deliberately allowed for personal interpretation.

The Sulman Prize is awarded for the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist. Established within the terms of the late Sir John Sulman’s bequest, it was first awarded in 1936.