⚪️🔴🟠🟡🟢🔵🟣⚫️ NEW DIRECTION Ed. No. 163 - A LADY WHO LIVED WITH DIGNITY
EULOGY
Artwork Title: "URIEL WILLIAMS - A Lady who Lived with Dignity" (2026)
Artist: Neville Williams
Media: Mixed Media
Size: 91cm W x 121cm H
From: Neville Williams
Subject: ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL….ARE WE THAT NEUROTIC?
Date: 12 March 2026 at 11:52:42 am AEDT
To: The Editor THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD,
COMMENT EDITOR SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, entries@ag.nsw.gov.au
Dear Editor,ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL….ARE WE THAT NEUROTIC?While acknowledging that many in our world are not in a place for listening presently I persist perhaps stupidly in trying to encourage us to look into our own mirrors.I had been working sporadically on a portrait of my Mother over the last twelve months with the intention hopefully of entering it into the next Archibald Prize. I say “sporadically" because my Mother’s health was deteriorating and I had found my energies and attentions more focussed on actually caring for my Mother than having any creative energy to complete an artwork of her.I finally said to her that I couldn’t complete the work at this time. Not that she minded. My Mother had no need to be immortalised. She was a simple lady who lived a positive, dignified and contributive life. She laughed a lot. A bit of a party girl really. She liked people and people liked her. At the end she cried a bit. A friend of mine not partial to throwing around her supportive comments recently described Mum as “an Australian Champion”…”One person I truly respected". Uriel Williams was certainly one of the best of her generation. We buried her quietly in late December and will be having a “Celebration of her well lived life” in early April.As the waves of grief begin to subside and with rest I am starting to open a new door following a life focussed on caring for Mum and somehow have managed to find the strength at a difficult time to almost complete the painting that I previously thought might remain sitting in a corner unattended indefinitely.To my surprise I have found that to enter the Archibald Prize the sitter now needs to provide a written statement giving their permission for an artist to actually paint a chosen subject’s portrait. I mean how much more bureaucracy can we add to our lives?Clearly we have manufactured a society where there is now fear of how an artist might interpret a chosen subject. Have we become so sensitive and touchy as a society as to how we might be seen by others that there is the need for more barriers to be added to our already brick wall separated tribes? This is just plain neuroses. Putting chains on artists or more particularly creativity in general is only making the barrier of our own unhappiness even thicker.And we wonder why we get the likes of Putin and Trump in charge.They are put there by us to knock down the walls of our own ignorance and stupidity. Quite painfully too I would suggest.O come on. The only criticism my Mother had of the portrait I was doing was that it showed her craggy hands brought about by years of hard labour. She certainly knew what hard honest work was. Something entirely suitable to reveal to a lazy indulged world that wants everything presented to it as an ideal on a plate with no work involved.Uriel's wedding ring is worn down, the engraved pattern on it gone, leaving a gnarled circle of thin wire.This neurotic intellectually bound up world needs a complete grounding. No need for artists to fit their stereotypes by being anarchic.We are doing a good job through self generated unhappiness of wreaking havoc on our own manufactured lack of connection to our world, each other but mostly to ourselves. We don't know who we are. Mum did. She was love. Her own created Angel*.Kind regards, Neville Williams
* See if you can find the angel subliminally placed in the above artwork. "Uriel" means angel.
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