Julia Ritson

Finalist | Len Fox Painting Prize 2022

Julia Ritson 'Finalist' in the 2022 Len Fox Painting Prize, at Castlemaine Art Museum, with her work 'Untitled 20-12', measuring 41 x 41 cm.

"A planting of eucalypts sits within an urban framework of billboards, high-rise buildings, and the metallic flash of passing cars. The everyday realm drenched in sunlight. Colours, light, and texture within the grid embrace and dissect the form of two trunks, transforming the conventional view of a landscape.

Beyond depiction and representation, this painting captures the shifting effects of light and colour criss-crossing the surface. Like the works of E.P. Fox, opacity and transparency are at play to create a type of atmosphere. Light and the absence of light.

The universality of the grid weaves intricate links between constraint, harmony, and wildness. By fusing irregularity, chance, and accident, the formal rigidity of the closed grid is opened to reveal greater interpretation and meaning. The understanding of the work is liberated as if seeing a landscape simultaneously through multiple perspectives at once. By making the grid more open and fluid, it is forever shapeshifting.

This painting plays with colour and light, movement and stillness, leaving the viewer with an impression of their own making."


The Len Fox Painting Award is a biennial acquisitive painting prize and is awarded to a living Australian artist to commemorate the life and work of Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865–1915), the uncle of Len Fox, partner of benefactor Mona Fox.

The Len Fox Award recognises and promotes the work of Australian artists pursuing the artistic interests and qualities of E. P. Fox. These include engagement with colour and light; ambitious connections with international developments in art; and, an interest in travel and an engagement with the cultures of diverse regions and peoples.

Exhibiting artists:
Zoe Amor, Kylie Banyard, Kim Barter, Andrew Browne, Richard Butler Bowdon, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green, Evie Cahir, Kevin Chin, Dale Cox, Rhett D’Costa, Jacki Fewtrell Gobert, Celia Fernndez, Emily Feretti, Robert Fielding, Hannah Fox, Jane Giblin, James Grant, Safak Gurboga, Katherine Hattam, Mark Hislop, Karen Holland, Casey Jeffery, Dena Kahan, Anthea Kemp, Nusra Latif Qureshi, Robert Maclaurin, Harley Manifold, Rob McHaffie, Nicola Moss, Elizabeth Nelson, Grant Nimmo, Lori Pensini, Marina Pumani-Brown, Adam Pyett, Steven Rendall, Julia Ritson, Lucy Roleff, Rachael Robb, Jennie Stewart, Adriane Strampp, Clive Stratford, Kynan Sutherland, Ross Taylor, Kate Tucker, Ebony Truscott, Deborah Walker, Marcus Wills, Renee Wilson, Alice Wormald, Christine Wrest-Smith, Michael Vale and Judith Van Heeren, with the winner Greg Creek.