Surf Coast artist keeping illustrious company

Surf Coast artist Vaughan Prain’s latest exhibition of 23 paintings at Torquay’s Hoop Gallery belies his late start to the medium.

At 75 the Anglesea painter only seriously picked up a brush 10 years ago when a colleague saw his drawings and suggested he should have a show, so he set up a studio in one of his kids old bedrooms and got to work.

“I had 11 big paintings for that first show and sold six,” he said of the exhibition at the Phyllis Palmer Gallery in Bendigo.

Largely concerning himself with figurative studies and painting with acrylics – “far less toxic than oil” – one of his more recent works earnt him wall space alongside some of the nation’s best.

“My kids persuaded me to go in the Archibald last year, was my first try,” he said.

His painting of indie rock star Ron S Peno from Died Pretty may not have made the cut for the nations most prestigious portrait prize, but it was selected for the Salon des Refuses show at the S.H. Ervin Gallery above the Rocks in Sydney, an annual ‘alternative’ selection of works from the Archibald.

“Basically I’m a no-name…they get over 900 entries.

“You get a 10-second ‘are you noticeable or not.’

“The Salon is interesting because I’m alongside a few previous winners like Wendy Sharpe, so you’re keeping illustrious company.”

Unable to attend the show due to lockdowns at the time, he later found out that his portrait of Peno was in the mix for the people’s choice award, something he described as “encouraging.”

The show at Hoop is similarly rewarding he said, as he’s getting real-time feed back on what people think of his works.

“I have a captive audience because the other half of Hoop is a theatre and there’s a show on at the moment, so I’ve have been loitering and chatting to the audience, it’s been very informative.

“During the day you can have as little as four or five people come in, but before the show you can have 45 and they all see something different.”

Vaughan Prain’s exhibition Roleplay is at Hoop Gallery, 77 Beach Road Torquay, until Sunday, October 30.