Natasha Walsh has been awarded the 2018 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, which will see her take up a three-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and receive $40,000 funding to further her art education while in Europe. Her winning body of work includes her 2018 self-portrait Dear Frida.

A young Australian artist and three-time finalist in the Archibald Prize, Walsh examines her own mortality through intricately detailed miniature self-portraits painted on copper. Her use of copper as a support for paintings evokes the fluctuating nature of her subject matter as the metal is highly responsive to change until sealed by the layers of paint. Walsh’s work was previously selected as a finalist for the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, the Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition in Edinburgh and the Waverley Arts Prize.

Natasha Walsh Dear Frida 2018 oil on copper, collection of the artist. Photo: AGNSW

Established in 1999 by the late Beryl Whiteley, the scholarship is open to Australian painters aged between 20 and 30 years. Scholarship alumni and guest judge Ben Quilty said Walsh’s work “has a quiet yet very self-assured sophistication that belies her youth. The future...