This painting of Adam Mazzon is an example of photorealistic painting at its best. If you ever need to paint a portrait of a person ‘in action’ with a great deal of verisimilitude then there is only one way – paint a photograph.
Dimensions: 76x101cm
Painted: 2023
Materials: Acrylic on canvas
Private collection
The story behind Adam Mazzon
The reason for this painting is that Bert lost a bet with Adam Mazzon. He was training at his gym (PTC Eltham) when his being overweight came up.
“Oh, I can lose 30kg by the end of the year.”
“I bet you won’t.”
“Ok then. When I lose all that weight, you can fix me up with a root with a hot woman.”
“And what if you don’t?”
“I’ll paint your portrait and enter it the Archibald Prize.”
They shook hands.
And Bert didn’t lose any weight at all.
He started this painting early in 2021 and used a canvas as a support instead of his usual MDF board. It took many hours just in the preparation phase. Apply gesso, sand, apply gesso, sand… Eventually that part was done and the drawing stage was undertaken. A lot of hours went into that. Then came the painting. Many more hours.
And then he stopped. Bert had decided to paint another work for the 50 Squared Art Prize; which took several weeks of intense effort. Ultimately, he failed at that little adventure. You can read about that here.
For many months, he barely painted anything and was totally despondent. It was another blow at his attempt to get a foot in the door of the ‘art world’.
Early in 2022, Bert resumed his Adam Mazzon portrait and spent a great deal of time on completing this work.
He had re-read the rules of the Archibald Prize and realized that his use of a photographic source clearly contravened the rules, so he planned to enter this into the Sulman Prize. The morning of 10th March Bert was on the last leg of his journey with this artwork. Disaster struck.
Bert went to apply the final clear acrylic coat and the red lettering at the bottom smeared. You can read what he wrote about it on Instagram here. Bert cleaned it up pretty good, but in terms of time for a pickup by the freight company, he was outta luck.
Early in 2023 the painting was repaired but due to the cost of sending it to Sydney, Bert decided to just give Adam the painting and not enter it into the 2023 Archibald Prize.
Source image of realism painting Adam Mazzon
Detail views of realism painting Adam Mazzon
