A WOMAN who spent seven hours a day alone and scaling a hill for a fortnight to photograph a mountain in North Cyprus has taken out a $15,000 art prize for her pictures.
Lynne Roberts-Goodwin's depiction of the five peaks of Five Fingers garnered her the latest in a litany of prizes, this time for As The Sky Falls Through Five Fingers.
The major Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award prize came courtesy of the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, Gymea.
Roberts-Goodwin has recently travelled to Iran and Mexico, Jordan and Japan in pursuit of her art, and one of her most recent projects was photographing ravens.
"I always work in very remote locations," Roberts-Goodwin said.
"I like dirty landscapes, not picturesque landscapes."
Her various "offices" are usually a long way from her Sans Souci birthplace, where her mother still lives.
"I'm always coming back to Sans Souci because it is the family home," she said.
In between she has lived in Britain and lectured at Gymea TAFE.
"When you are working alone you are your own carter and carrier," she said.
Roberts-Goodwin has not decided what she will do with her prizemoney but she thought it would go back into her work.
Another woman who won the gallery's $5000 Hazelhurst Art Award had no hesitation about what she intended doing with her proceeds — they will go on new art equipment.
Michelle Cawthorn of Grays Point said that she was thrilled to have become one of the 96 finalists in this her fourth time entering the national competition.
She won the prize for her work entitled Bear.
"I was impressed by the calibre of the artists, there were significant artists with international careers," she said.
Cawthorn said the style of her entry was a juxtaposition of the real with memory.
"It is a free association of the conscious with the unconscious, where I draw on memory."
Cawthorn teaches art at Hazelhurst.
The Emerging Artist prize of $5000 went to Gregory Hodge for Magazine Mystics, an acrylic work on paper.
The Packers' Prize was won by Justine Varga with Moving Out, a type C print hand-printed from negative.
The judge was art critic Andrew Frost.
