Cherry Hood is an Australian artist, best known for her oversized paintings of children's faces.

Biography

Cherry Alexandra Hood was born in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

in 1950, and is the great granddaughter of Australian photographer,

Sam Hood Samuel John Hood (20 August 1872 in South Australia - 8 June 1953) was an Australian photographer and photojournalist whose career spanned from the 1880s to the 1950s.Sydney College of the Arts The Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) is a contemporary art school that was a faculty of the University of Sydney from 1990 until 2017, when it became a school of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Until the end of 2019, the campus was loca ...

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

in 2000. Her thesis investigated gender politics in art and culture, cultural mores and taboos surrounding the representation of the male body. Hood had countless solo and group shows while at university in artist-run spaces and is now represented and shows regularly At Tim Olsen Gallery in Sydney, Heiser Gallery in Brisbane, Arc One Gallery in Melbourne. Her works have been collected by most major institutions in Australia and many corporate and private collections. Hood has had solo shows in New York, Zurich, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. Hood prefers to work in watercolour, which she allows to bleed and drip, to produce her oversized paintings. Hood specialises in intense depictions which are most frequently anonymous composites with their own identities and not portraits of any actual person. She has become well known for her haunting, large-scale images of young boy's faces. Hood won the 2002

Archibald Prize The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor ...

for her portrait ''Simon Tedeschi Unplugged''. In

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanist ...

she was an Archibald Prize finalist with her water colour of art lecturer Matthÿs Gerber, in

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple Inc., Apple's first iPhone (1st generation), iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakis ...

she was again a finalist with her water colour of Australian artist and social commentator

Ben Quilty Ben Quilty (born 1973) is an Australian artist and social commentator, who has won a series of painting prizes: the 2014 Prudential Eye Award, 2011 Archibald Prize, and 2009 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. He has been described as one of Au ...

, and in

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

with her portrait of '' Michael Zavros''. In 2003 Hood won the Kedumba Drawing Award for her graphite, coloured pencil, watercolour drawing named ''Joshua''.

2002 Archibald Prize win

It was a photograph

picture An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimension ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

Simon Tedeschi Simon Tedeschi (born 1 May 1981) is an Australian classical pianist and writer. Early life Tedeschi was born in Gosford to Mark Tedeschi QC, Senior Crown Prosecutor for New South Wales, and doctor Vivienne Tedeschi, the daughter of a Polis ...

that first caught Cherry Hood's eye. She went to one of his

concert A concert is a live music performance in front of an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, choir, or band. Concerts are held in a wide variet ...

s, 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 large pale blue eyes which you can almost see through, his look 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 am interested in the way his pale eyes both reflect light and have a differentiation between the pupil and iris. I met him and found 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 huge portraits of boys for my next exhibition. Simon saw these works and agreed to pose for me in the same way. :''It was quite easy to portray 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 dollars.

Illustrations

Cherry Hood illustrated

JT LeRoy Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy, or simply JT LeRoy is a literary persona created in the 1990s by American writer Laura Albert. LeRoy was presented as the author of three books of fiction, which were purportedly semi-autobiographical accounts by a tee ...

's 2004 novel ''Harold's End'' with a series of her distinctive portraits as well as pictures of Harold, the pet snail whose name gives the book its title. In the Acknowledgements LeRoy wrote, "This is the first of what I hope will be a very long collaboration between us. Our next book is titled ''Labor''." JT LeRoy, ''Harold's End''. San Francisco: Last Gasp, 2004, p. 94.

References

External links

*
TURNER GALLERIES... cherry hoodCherry Hood works , Olsen Gallery Sydney Australia
*http://www.dianefarrisgallery.com/artist/hood/archibald.html
Cherry Hood Art For Sale - Harvey Galleries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hood, Cherry 1950 births Living people Archibald Prize winners Australian women painters 20th-century Australian women artists 20th-century Australian artists 21st-century Australian women artists 21st-century Australian artists Archibald Prize finalists