Kerrie Lester Interrupting Mr Smart!

On September 11 2001, Kerrie Lester went to the opening of Jeffrey Smart’s exhibition at the Australian Galleries where she watched him ‘walking around selling his usual $20 million worth of art. He’s such an awesome character’. Then she went home to one of her teenage sons, crashed on the couch and ‘watched with the world changing with those terrible events. Jeffrey somehow became part of that for me, part of my focus. I saw him a few times in the next few days and I asked if I could paint his portrait and he went, “oh yeah, if you want”.’

Lester has known Smart – one of Australia’s most highly acclaimed and successful artists – for years. She spent time with him over the next week. ‘One day in the gallery he was drawing over one of his paintings and so I sat down and drew him, interrupting his busy schedule of lunches and interviews,’ she says, ‘hence the title.’

‘He is such a character,’ adds Lester. ‘He has an awesome presence and such a fab face. It’s such an imposing face, which is why the portrait is so big. Painting him was very much an honour. It was probably the most challenging portrait I have done yet, due to the greatness of him.’

Born in Sydney in 1953, Lester studied at the National Art School and the Alexander Mackie College. She has been a finalist in the Sulman Prize four times and is in the Wynne Prize again this year for the sixth time. This is the 14th time she has been hung in the Archibald Prize and she has been highly commended for four of those.

Lester’s portrait of Smart is now in the Macquarie University Art Collection.