© National Portrait Gallery 2025
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Darling Portrait Prize 2024 Finalist
Elif Sezen
born Australia 1981
Portrait of John Leonard 2023
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
‘My painting is a portrait of Dr John Leonard, a well-known blind poetry editor, publisher, anthologist and retired academic. I, as a poet, had firsthand experience of Leonard’s gifts as an advisor when he edited my first book of poems Universal Mother, and my most recent collection A Little Book of Unspoken History. The background-symbology of this work resonates with my project and poem “Flowers, humans and mornings”. I included these primal symbols of existence to add a layer of meaning to the portrait, as they signify mornings – a new beginning, which resonates with fruitful intellectual and existential questionings.’
Elif Sezen is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist, bilingual writer and poet. In her work, she speculates upon reconceptualising memory traces emerging from familial, personal, collective trauma and loss.
© The artist
The Darling Portrait Prize is a biennial national prize for Australian portrait painting honouring the legacy of Mr L Gordon Darling AC CMG.
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