Portrait of Dad – On the Fly by Atticus Jones

I was born in Brisbane, and though I now live on Tamborine Mountain, I remain connected to it through family. Brisbane is where I hope to pursue my tertiary studies in Visual Arts. ‘Portrait of Dad – On the Fly’ was short-listed for this year’s Young Archie competition; I was honoured and humbled to learn it had been judged to be in the top 7% with over 3,400 entries from across Australia.

‘On the Fly’ is a portrait of my dad, who is a potter. He learned his skills as a potter from Brother William at The Friary Pottery in Brookfield, outer Brisbane during the 1980s. Dad has continued to work as a potter ever since.

In this portrait, I set out to capture something about my dad. He says his face is weathered; to capture the ruggedness of his features, I used a quill with ink. Dad’s pottery studio space is ordered disorganisation that looks haphazard, though he knows exactly where everything is. There’s years’ worth of materials and tools living in that space, coming in handy when he helps me construct 3 -dimensional inventions of my imagined sketchbook designs. I wanted this portrait to evoke Dad’s spontaneous nature of sketching concepts for his pots and our projects on the fly, often resting his coffee cup which forms a permanent mark of the time spent together.