Anh Nguyen ‘Notes on the Season’

Anh Nguyen was born in Melbourne and now lives and paints in Thirroul on the NSW South Coast, with her partner and 4 children. Her art practice arrived by way of a circuitous route, though she had never really let go of that pencil from the time she made the very first mark. She was awarded the Lyn McCrea Memorial Drawing Prize in 2020, and was also the recipient of the Basil Sellers Art Award in 2018. She has been a finalist in other well-regarded prizes such as the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2023, 2022), Rick Amor Self-Portrait Prize (2022, 2020), Grace Cossington Smith Art Award (2021), Dobell Drawing Prize (2021), Kilgour Art Prize (2020 – Highly Commended).

“Like many of my other show titles, where I have pondered meaning in light of imagery, the word ‘season’ conjures for me a strange but alluring tension. The season can be both fixed or unspecified, it is cyclical but there is a definite ending, it can be wholly defined but also unclear when it began. My feeling towards my pictures are like this. Are they linear, contained, about a certain thing? Or do they meander, partly imagined, partly remembered, partly dreamt? Was it today or yesterday, a longing, something real? ” – Anh Nguyen