ALTHOUGH senator Jacqui Lambie has not been in direct contact with artist Mark Tippett of Engadine, he has heard the outspoken Tasmanian politician thought his bold caricature of her was "quite funny".
Tippett depicted the senator in an infamous Kim Kardashian pose with a bare backside as an entry in the Bald Archies, and it has now become one of the finalists in the competition, which started in 1994 as a send-up of the Archibald Prize.
It is the only art competition in the world to be judged by a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Maude.
"I've been in the Bald Archies six times and been short-listed twice, and I think I have a good chance of winning with Jacqui," Tippett said.
"I started out as a commercial artist when I was 16 with Coles' advertising department and I became art director and did vocational education part-time."
Tippett's portrait of Lambie — entitled Turn the Other Cheek — shows the senator wearing little more than her signature scarf, gloves and a small tattoo of Tasmania.
The artist submitted three entries in the Bald Archies; Australian golfer Karrie Webb made it, but the late cricketer Phillip Hughes did not.
The winner will be announced on July 24 in Sydney.
The 2015 Bald Archie exhibition is in Canberra until March 8 before it tours NSW country regions.
Do you think caricature is a legitimate art form?
