Aussie $100,00 Art Prize

A relatively unknown artist from Melbourne has won the richest art prize in Australia. Prudence Flint won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, collecting $100,000 prize money. Ms Flint was chosen from 30 finalists for her work called A fine romance number nine. Ms Flint says was shocked by the win. "Because my painting is not really a classic portrait at all and so I wasn't really expecting to, so that's why I am really thrilled," she said. She says historically women have been painted as objects in the past, so she has deliberately painted the abstract of herself in a modern context. "I wanted the woman to look really kind of occupied and doing something very modern and important so because I think it is very much what women do these days is they work hard," Ms Flint said. Ms Flint says she plans to buy a house, a laptop computer and build a studio with her prize money.