Gary Grealy

The portrait was part of a series for an exhibition called Art Maker Patron Lover. Every person is researched as much as I possibly can. The actual process, if they're comfortable it won't be long.

The prize has been running 10 years and I've entered for 10 years. The very first prize was was at the at the Old Parliament House and I can still remember that sort of thrill and excitement. But every year 10 years I've entered it and I've been hung eight out of the ten years... and what happened to those last two? You enter it sort of with great expectation and with you know wishing to win but but actually never really expecting to win and uh when it came I'm gonna say I was just absolutely gob-smacked. Yeah it was sort of like it was it was it's a surreal thing to actually go in and my first my first feeling of walking through the door to see the exhibition the nerves the heart is going but ironically the moment that I stepped up I felt instantly calm which was bizarre like it was really an unusual feeling because there was a lot of people.

Man oh man. It gives you a platform to show your work and for me it was sort of really quite integral to what I do because I'd actually started making portraits of people within the art world and that continued on and for no reason there was no end game it was just you know this is what I'm going to do because I like art and then the National Portrait Prize presented itself which gave an extra purpose for what I was doing. I could keep doing it and there was you know more chance for it to be seen. I think that sort of illustrates a real benefit for for doing these sort of things. Yeah, I think it's wonderful and what better what better place for it to be - when you love portraiture - than the National Portrait Gallery? Like it really doesn't get any better than that for me.