Guests buzzed around the National Portrait Gallery looking at the 93 portraits in wonder. Who was the winner of the career-changing 2010 Adam Art Award? Capital Times speaks to the lady behind the prize.

WHEN artist Harriet Bright heard she’d won the prestigious Adam Art Award, she thought she’d gone crazy.
“My first reaction was ‘I must not get excited, I must be imagining this,” she laughs. “Because I couldn’t tell anyone, I thought, ‘well maybe I just made it all up’.”
Bright couldn’t even question her sanity with husband Steve. “He’s somewhere in the South Island tramping with mates, out of cellphone range”.
“But it was for real”, marvels the tall and elegant Kapiti Coast artist in her soft British accent.
Her portrait of “Kayte”, a local blues singer reclining naked in a chair, caught the judge’s attention because he felt it was raw and honest.
“I painted her as part of a series of women who were older than me and who I wanted to be like in some respects,” Bright says. “She was a very open woman and was relaxed about sitting naked. She was also the last of the series, so I was working more fluidly.”
Being open and free is a life Bright’s lived.
After arriving here from England, she and her husband decided to have an adventure before their children, Adam, now 6, and Miriam, 8, reached school age.
For eight months the family moved from farm to farm, working for a roof and a feed, in what’s known as “woofing” in travellers’ speak.
Starting at Paekakariki, they went up to the Coromandel, down the West Coast of the South Island, and finished in Christchurch.
“My daughter actually wants to be a farmer now,” laughs Bright. “I loved that freedom, and I think children need some degree of risk.”
She doesn’t feel it would have been as safe to do the same thing in the UK.
Bright has many fond memories from the experience. She laughs as she recalls how Steve was asked to go and clear stones from a field, and little Adam wanted to go with him. They worked hard all day, before “coming back with identical blisters on their hands”.
“And watching my four-year-old daughter being led around the field on a horse by another seven-year-old – fantastic,” Bright chortles.
The family now live near Bright’s mother in Paekakariki, and she says the artistic community on the coast is invaluable to her work.
“We love the atmosphere. Everyone is supportive and helpful, which is very different from where I’m from in the UK,” she says. “There’s a group of 10 of us who work together, and it’s a great way to keep the energy flowing and swap techniques.”
One of the techniques that Bright thinks helped her secure the Adam Art Award is that she prefers to paint from life, rather than from a photograph.
“You can do interesting painting from photos, but if you want rawness and honesty, real life helps,” she says.
Bright also uses the technical discipline of drawing she picked up from her art training in the UK as practice, “but when my work really flies is when I’ve done that as my exercise and then I get to play”.
When his last job finished, her engineer husband decided not to pursue another in order to stay home with the kids, and let Bright take the reins.
“It’s helped me hugely. Even with my kids at school, a lot of the day would still be taken up with the washing and cleaning,” she says. “Plus, [Steve’s] been in an office for years now, so it’s nice for him to be at home with the kids.”
This is another reason why winning the Award’s $15,000 prize has been such a blessing.
“The money at this time is great, because having said ‘I’ll support the family by doing art’, it’s been really hard. I now know that that’s all taken care of,” she says.
And just holding the title of “winner” will open many doors for Bright.
The 2006 winner, Freeman White, says winning the award is a springboard for portrait artists. Since winning he has done artist’s residencies in Scotland, the US and Germany.
“It’s been really instrumental in helping me get my stuff out there” says White, who also entered this year’s competition. “If you win, you can make the most of it because people seem to take your work more seriously. They trust it will be good enough quality.”
Bright’s Kayte will become property of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery.
See all the entries at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Shed 11, 10.30am – 4.30pm until April 11.