The Royal Queensland Art Society would like to congratulate all the winners in the 2026 Queensland Figurative, an exhibition that celebrates the dynamic role of the human figure in visual art.
Thank you also to our judges Julie Fragar and Dr Kay Kane (FRQAS) for judging this exhibition. Please scroll down to view the winning artworks and judge’s comments.
Judged by Julie Fragar
First Prize
“I can’t wear yellow”
by Carol Goodwin
It was a great surprise to me that it was this small and unassuming painting by Carol Goodwin that exercised the strongest gravitational pull. The subject, or two subjects, appear completely comfortable in their domestic reality. The woman, who seems so sure of herself, meets the viewer’s gaze with a combination of intimacy, generosity and toughness. The composition is simple but perfectly balanced. It reads to me like a sort of contemporary domestic Australian variation of some of the paintings of Spanish Modernist painter Ramon Casas whose lounging women are ambivalent about whether we turn up to meet them or not. That ambivalence makes the subjects even more compelling because there is no performative desperation about them. Once I locked eyes with this subject (and her dog), I couldn’t turn away. It felt like a genuine human connection. You can’t ask much more of a figurative painting than that.
Second Prize
Dig In
by Dylan Jones
Jones’ painting embodies an easy domesticity, but in their case, the intimacy is doubled by the casual but dexterous application of paint. We have a strong sense of the moment the painting was made and are invited to relive it in the present. The perspective also means we don’t feel external to the painting; we are together with the subject, seated at the table along with other imagined subjects beyond the frame. It’s a seriously lively painting that makes us feel we are a part of a larger gathering, and it’s quite sure of itself.
Highly Commended
Stradbroke Island “Tony”
by Lien Jansen
Stradbroke Island “Tony” by Lien Jansen is another small and quiet painting in the show that I couldn’t stop looking at. The figure is painted in such a soft and simple way but is surrounded by a rough coastal atmosphere we can really feel closing in around him. I think it’s a deeply psychological little painting with an obvious reference to Caspar David Freidrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818), but with a local interpretation that feels completely fresh and sincere.
Highly Commended
Mother and Child
by Hyelan Kim
This painting is incredibly intimate. The relationship between mother and child is replicated in the careful and gentle surface of the painting. This one really has to be seen in person.
Highly Commended
Where’s the Promite?
by Julie Purcell
Where is the Promite? by Julie Purcell displays a highly dextrous and inventive use of watercolour, a medium that seems at odds with the subject-matter. That tension is just one of the many reasons the work is so compelling.
Highly Commended
Grand-mére à la Fenêtre
by Clara Philippe
This artist has managed a difficult, interesting tension between interior and exterior space that makes the life situation of the subject palpable.
Judged by Dr Kay Kane (FRQAS)
Fellows Recognition Award
Arna Baartz, In Her Studio
by Monica Batiste
A striking work. Strong composition. The eye is subtly led from the figure to the environment via tone shape and colour. The figure itself is skillfully drawn, and the overall economy of means encourages one to spend much more than a cursory minute in front of this painting.
