Hornsby Art Prize 2025 Winners

Prize	Artist	Artwork	Artist Statement
WINNER Hornsby Art Prize, $10,000	Silke Raetze, Green Tea with Alex	Green Tea with Alex, acrylic paint, ink, collaged papers, and stitched thread on canvas	Green tea with Alex’ is a portrait of my friend and fellow artist Alex Seton. Alex does not drink coffee, but he does make pots of green tea for visitors. We often sit on marble blocks outside his studio in the sun. Alex leans into the conversation, genuinely interested and curious. I wanted to convey these qualities about him. To build the image of Alex I used paper from every aspect of life, packaging paper for hair, cardboard pieces for the cup, everyday brown paper from supermarket shopping bags, simple black card and then beautiful handmade papers all collaged together to form the image. I then stitch, paint and sand the surface, repeating this process until nuances reveal themselves through the layers. In this way I feel a dialogue with the work emerges, this is the part of my process I enjoy the most.
Hornsby Shire Local Artist Award, $5,000	Roslyn Kean, Trapped Beneath the Surface	Trapped Beneath the Surface, hand carved and hand printed woodblocks on paper	At ground line there is so much at play in the environment. Water meets earth, sky meets a surface, and we engage with the ground line in our daily lives. We are constantly changing the natural ground line with grand ideas and invasive machines. At ground level there are exotic grasses that become evasive weeds in another location, surfaces are manicured in an attempt to rearrange nature, from thoughtfully arranged stepping stones to raked stone gardens and shifting fence lines. Taking the time to view what is at the edge or hidden just beneath the surface, the reflections at ground level, the foundations of what now pushes the skyline into greater heights. Without the ground line we lose our reference and how to care for our environment.
Sculpture Award $1,500	Rachel Lucas, The Survivor	The Survivor, stoneware ceramic, glaze, copper wire	Youth, perfect form, is quite simply beautiful. Age has a more profound and complex beauty. Hand built to a complete form, torn apart and partially reconstructed with copper wire, ‘The Survivor’ expresses faith in human endurance despite the ravages of time. It balances mass against negative space, that which survives against that which has been lost, to evoke perfection, still fully realised, seen clearly in the mind’s eye. Time breaks and degrades all human lives and artefacts, yet even undergoing these processes of destruction, our works and our lives may retain strength and grace. The body breaks: the spirit is intact.
Painting Award $1,500	Katherine Edney, I want to lie in the clouds with you	I want to lie in the clouds with you, oil on birch panel	I want to lie in the clouds with you' explores themes of love, grief and loss related to the recent passing of my best friend. My current practice utilises the subject of bedsheets as a metaphor for both comfort and restlessness. While bedsheets provide a place of security - a retreat from the world - they're also a place where my mind wanders and my thoughts are laid bare. I've become captivated by these opposing states that have enveloped me over the past years.
Photography Award $1,500	Tamara Dean, Realms	Realms, photographic print	Realms explores an intimate convergence of humanity and nature, capturing a moment where boundaries blur between the real and the imagined. The figure peacefully glides through a luminous, submerged world alive with roses, peonies, and vibrant greenery. This ethereal environment created in my custom-built underwater studio combines submerged flora with a printed photographic backdrop of sky and clouds, evoking a sense of being within a dream. In this space, the figure becomes a traveller between worlds, embodying a graceful fusion of the human form with the natural environment, approaching a threshold into the unknown. Realms invites contemplation on our connection to nature, not as separate observers, but as deeply embedded, existing within its beauty and mystery.
Printmaking Award $1,500	Anne Starling, Home Comforts	Home Comforts, linocut, woodblock on paper	This linocut depicts a solitary figure suspended in domestic stillness, surrounded by the familiar comforts of home. The interior setting evokes a sense of security and idealised suburban life. Yet just beyond the window, an ominous world encroaches; thick black smoke rises against the toxic purple-orange sky, hinting at disaster. The man neither reacts nor engages with what looms beyond the glass. This emotional detachment sits at the heart of the piece. He is not a figure of panic or peace, but of ambiguity - caught in tension between safety and threat, comfort and collapse. His passivity mirrors a broader societal condition; the inability - refusal - to respond meaningfully to crisis when it feels distant or overwhelming. The work is an exploration of paralysis in the face of crisis. It urges the viewer to confront the fragile balance between comfort and destruction before time runs out.
Drawing Award $1,500	Claire Tozer, Flow	Flow, ink pen and pencil on paper	I live near the ocean, lagoons, rivers and bushland on Darkinjung Country, the Central Coast. There is so much to paint and draw here. After recent rains, the clouds parted, and the sky and water were bright again. It was such a joy to see I wanted to draw a watery landscape in blue.
People’s Choice Award $500	Pamela Pauline, If they had known	If they had known, photographic print	This still life pays homage to Australia’s botanical and ecological richness - beauty that was entirely absent from the revered still life paintings of the Dutch Golden Era. While European artists celebrated imported blooms and exotic fruits, Australia’s unique native flora remained undocumented. Centuries later, we risk losing some of these overlooked treasures forever. Featuring threatened plant species including the Davidson Plum - all photographed from live collections rather than cut flowers - this work is a quiet act of reverence and urgency. At its centre, a pair of threatened, Purple-crowned fairy-wrens serve as delicate sentinels, symbolising the growing biodiversity crisis unfolding across Australia. Through this composition, I hope to draw attention to what has been historically ignored, and what is now imperilled - to shift still life from a genre of abundance to one of awareness, where beauty becomes a call to protect rather than merely admire.