Natasha Walsh The scent of rain (self-portrait)

‘This self-portrait offered me a means of exploring my own mortality through the immediacy of working from life on the equally ephemeral support of copper,’ says Natasha Walsh.

‘Additionally, it enabled me to explore the relationship between the internal sense of self and the external appearance, which can define us in another’s eyes.’

‘I am struck by the otherness of my appearance, simultaneously familiar and strange, never seen directly but through another lens, such as a camera or a mirror,’ says Walsh.

‘Painting enables me to claim this appearance, as the external is diffused intimately through my internal self into paint.’

‘The imaginary impression of a cloudy sky is even more revealing of my internal self, hinting at layers brewing beneath the surface, like the threat of rain.’

Born in Sydney in 1994, Walsh graduated with a Masters in Fine Art at the National Art School this year. Her work is currently being shown as a selected finalist in the Scottish Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. In 2016 she was highly commended in the Portia Geach Memorial Award, and in 2015 she won the Emerging Artist Prize in the Mosman Art Prize. This is her second time in the Archibald Prize.