Melissa Ritchie Rhys smart mouth

Rhys Nicholson is a comedian, known for his dapper style and his vibrant red hair. His material often refers to growing up as a gay man in Newcastle and marriage inequality in the Australian legal system.

‘With this piece, I have a painted a portrait within a portrait, using Rhys’s image on the match box,’ says Melissa Ritchie.

‘Not only do we have the obvious parallel between Rhys’s image and the Redheads brand, but the box design also becomes a metaphor for Rhys’s career as a comedian. The matches represent words, while the fire is the hurtful bullying that Rhys and many LGBT youth have been subjected to at some point in their lives. In this painting, Rhys has taken ownership of those smart-arse comments and now uses them in his work. He stands proud over a pile of burnt matches, ready to strike another. He is the smart mouth. He has turned those cutting words into a lucrative career. They are 100 percent reclaimed.’

Born in Georgia, USA, in 1978, Ritchie moved to Australia as a child and grew up in Wollongong. After establishing a career in advertising, she started portrait painting in 2012. She has been a finalist in the 2014 Shirley Hannan Portrait Prize, the 2014 Black Swan Portraiture Prize, the 2015 Kilgour Prize, the 2015 Portia Geach Memorial Art Award and the 2016 Percival Portrait Prize. This is her first time in the Archibald Prize.