Julie
Adam Southgate
- Sitter: Julie Fragar
- Medium: Oil on Canvas
- Dimensions: 65cm x 65cm
- Representation: This artist represents themselves
About the artwork
Julie Fragar is an accomplished artist who won the Archibald Prize in 2025. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in major art institutions and is the Program Director of Visual Arts at the Queensland College of Art and Design, where she taught Southgate. Her work is held in major public collections nationally.
In this commanding portrait, Fragar is captured sitting on the artist’s chair, legs crossed, in the painting studios of QCAD. Southgate describes her as “an artist and mentor I deeply admire… Her influence on my development as a painter was significant. Her encouragement challenged me to refine my practice and trust in process.”
Both personal tribute and formal exploration, the painting reflects aspects of Fragar’s own painting methodology, such as her distinctive layering of blacks over magenta. Southgate uses different brushwork applications to create tension and variation across the surface, bringing the painting to life.
“In this way, the painting becomes a dialogue between painter and sitter, teacher and student, and between two practices connected by a shared respect for material and process.”
