Joint Winner - Jonathan Throsby won the scholarship in 2005 with his complex paintings of the land. “Having lived and worked in some of the remotest areas of Northern and Western Australia,” says Jonathan, “I am aware of a desert, one that has been created since white settlement, called agriculture.

Joint Winner 

Joint Winner - Tom Doherty’s primary focus is on Plein Air watercolour paintings of the landscape where he lives in the Blue Mountains. With the opportunity of an exhibition at Mary Place Gallery in Sydney, he applied for the Windmill Trust to assist with the exhibition. The scholarship provided him the financial support to mount the exhibition.

Receiving the scholarship in 2003, Soozie Coumbe was able to work on a sculptural project in a rural village in Japan. There, she was part of a team of assistants who worked with the local community of Nanatsugama to realise a community sculpture by Australian artist Anne Graham for inclusion in the Echico Tsumari Art Triennial.

Stephanie works primarily in the areas of drawing and installation, often with ephemeral materials and in site-specific locations. Her practice focuses on the domestic as both a physical and psychological space.

Joint Winner - Christine McMillan spent much of her art life exploring the meaning of these words ‘push the idea’, advice given to her by artist Ken Unsworth. Her works investigates complex ideas, from environmental concerns, to stories of the collection of materials, and sculptural pieces that demonstrate the effects of force on clay.

Joint Winner - Karen Bulgin is an abstract artist living in Port Macquarie, NSW. Before studying art, she studied geography - atmospheric conditions, winds, cloud formations - and this influence is evident in her paintings.

Camille engages in the act of ‘making ‘as a means of navigating my way through the often puzzling experience of being human. Her work is deeply embedded in a process-focused practice; on a personal level, through the materials she works with and in the methods she uses to create the work.

Peter Rutherford won the third Windmill Scholarship in 1999. Of Irish and Aboriginal descent and from the Wiradjuri tribe, he held a deep interest in drawing and art from his early days, completing his first oil painting at the age of nine.

Painting unavoidably focuses my thoughts. It brings intensity, an immediacy which brings the mind into sharp focus…..I work in oils because they are flexible, malleable, able to grow, develop and be changed. They are forgiving and welcoming. I can examine the self through the materials and process.”