art honors ― handmark artists

Handmark artists have been making their mark both locally and overseas, including in one of the world’s richest landscape art prizes.

With its $100,000 prize purse, the 2021 Hadley’s Art Prize attracted a record 721 entries from across Australia. Only thirty-three artists made the final cut for this prestigious landscape award, including Handmark’s Martin Rek who is thrilled to be on the list.

The 37-year-old avid hiker is quickly gaining a following for his drawings of Tasmania’s rugged wilderness. In fact, when we catch up with Martin he has just returned from Mount Field where days were spent braving the cold with a sketchbook in hand. Sublime, yet detailed landscape sketches in carbon pencil are Martin’s calling card, but his Hadley’s entry, Reverie, is a radical departure for this methodical artist.

“Reverie began as one concept landscape, but over a number of months it morphed into something completely different,” Martin tells us. “Spontaneously the landscape began to fragment and eventually the work evolved into a collection of little pieces of Tasmania’s wild landscape that represent my happy places.” The Hadley’s Art Prize will be announced in Hobart on July 31.

In the meantime other Handmark artists have also made the final cut in different parts of the state. Printmakers Rebecca Coote and Melissa Smith are both finalists in the Bay of Fires Art Prize, an award for modern contemporary art that will be announced in St Helens this Friday. While on the north-west coast, jewellers, Shauna Mayben and Di Allison, have both been shortlisted for the Women’s Art Prize Tasmania. The winner of the state’s only female art competition will be unveiled in Burnie this Thursday.

Congratulations also to Diane Masters. Her print, Shining a Light on Plankton – Polychaete greets a Sea Butterfly, is currently on display in France as part of the International Mini Print Cantabria exhibition.