It was a riot of colour in the Gallery as we welcomed Del Kathryn Barton’s portrait of Maggie Beer AO into the collection. A striking tribute to one of Australia’s most loved celebrity cooks by the two-time Archibald Prize winner, Barton’s portrait embeds her sitter in a tangle of vibrant colour and personal symbolism, including pomegranates, quinces and a beloved pheasant. In celebration of the commission, guests at the Gallery and online enjoyed an insightful in conversation between artist and sitter, where Beer revealed that ‘When I first saw the painting, I was very emotional and blown away and excited and confronted. Every time I looked I found something new in it. To me you were unzipping my life’. Barton says that ‘Maggie is someone that you meet and you just fall in love with straight away’.
