Shaun Tan Award for Young Artists

Congratulations to this year's award winners

People's Choice Winner

Lower Primary category (years one and two)

This is such an impressively detailed and fully completed drawing for such a young person, with wonderful attention to detail and blending colours. The subject matter is close to my own heart, the oversized, friendly, fantastic creature that looks on the delighted human with great compassion – it’s the mainstay of some of our oldest mythologies, and deep in our dreams. The background details are interesting and intuitively narrative, the blue path is not something you’d notice, but feels very important in describing a journey, a sense of things happening - Shaun Tan

Middle Primary Category (years three and four)

Technically amazing, particularly for a fairly unforgiving medium like watercolour, which requires a fair bit of confidence and planning. One thing about drawing and painting is that it’s very hard to hide nervousness and indecision, it tends to show up in every stroke. On the other hand, when it’s decisive and keen, that also comes across when we look at a picture. The strokes here are strong, bold and alert, which then describes the subject perfectly. All energy radiates out from the point of the nose, the part of the animal that cuts into reality and penetrates the darkness, backed up by vibrant green eyes - Shaun Tan

Upper Primary category (years five and six)                                       

A painting that could be at home in any gallery, by an artist of any age. The arrangement of soft forms and colours is harmonious and also strange, which is always what you want as a painter, and hard to get right. A picture that feels welcoming and calm, but that also stays interesting and lets the eye roam about like a traveler in a new land - Shaun Tan

Lower Secondary category (years seven, eight and nine)

A possible fairytale reference pulled into a sharp, contemporary reality, which also captures the feelings of self-awareness, self-consciousness and critique that are so often  the unwelcome agenda of teenage life. That the mirror is roughly the same proportion as a tablet screen may not be a coincidence. Technically, in line and shading, composition and concept development, this is a brilliant piece, without losing any emotional charge for all the attention to precise execution. - Shaun Tan

Upper Secondary category (years ten, eleven and twelve)

Anyone backpacking alone in a foreign city knows this feeling. We can imagine this scene as one illustration in a much longer, complex narrative. The mixed media here is used very effectively, and the tones carefully considered to give the right feeling of alienation. The weird perspective of receding and scale shifts ­add to a very particular sense of time and place, yet one that’s also universal. The human figures with reversed outlines are intriguing, feeling anonymous but still lively, just unable to connect with the non-human mouse who, ironically, we identify with thanks to the artist’s skill - Shaun Tan

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