Cherry Hood

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Cherry Hood is an Australian artist, primarily a portraitist. She won the 2002 Archibald Prize for her portrait, Simon Tedeschi Unplugged.

1 Biography
2 2002 Archibald Prize win
3 Illustration for JT LeRoy
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Hood attained a Master of Visual Art at Sydney College of the Arts in 2000. Her thesis investigated gender politics in art and cultural mores and taboos surrounding the representation of the male body. Hood has since had two solo exhibitions at Mori Gallery. Prior to this, she had countless solo and group shows at university and artist-run spaces. Her works are in many collections in Australia and overseas. Hood works in the unlikely medium of watercolour to produce her portraits, which are most frequently anonymous composites. She was a finalist in the 2001 Archibald Prize with her water colour of art lecturer Matthÿs Gerber.

[edit] 2002 Archibald Prize win

It was a picture of Australian pianist Simon Tedeschi that first caught Cherry Hood's eye. She went to one of his concerts, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and then asked him to sit for her. "Although I don't normally do portrait/likenesses of people, I usually paint boys or adolescent males," she says. "Simon is only 20 and he has blue eyes and the look that suits the way I make images. The eyes are always the focus of my paintings. I want them to reflect the gaze of the viewer and I prefer the way paler eyes both reflect light and have a differentiation between the pupil and iris. When I met him, it turned out that he is particularly empathetic, easy going and very sensitive artistically. He saw my work and he understood what I was doing."

Hood decided to paint him topless because, she says, "he is always portrayed in formal clothes and often with a piano as well. Images of him are usually more about his playing than about him as a person let alone him as a sensual body. Also, at that time I was finishing a series of portraits of boys for my show at Mori Gallery. Simon saw these works and agreed to pose for me in the same way.

It was quite easy to get him because he has strong characteristics. I think it does look like him, if not at his most rested. He keeps up a rigorous international performance schedule and lives between Sydney and London. He was suffering jet lag or in 'post concert letdown' when he sat for this painting. When he last saw the work he said, 'love the whiskers, remind me to stop over in Bangkok next time.'

She received a prize of $35,000 Australian dolars.

[edit] Illustration for JT LeRoy

Cherry Hood illustrated JT LeRoy's 2005 novel Harold's End with a series of her distinctive portraits as well as a series of pictures of Harold, who gives the book its title - a snail. In the acknowledgements, LeRoy says "This is the first of what I hope will be a very long collaboration between us. Our next book is titled Labor."