What does it mean to teach creative practice? At the Avondale’s School of Arts and Business Visual Arts strand, it means being an active, committed artist yourself: taking risks, and showing students that a life in art is not only possible, but deeply worth pursuing. Two of our lecturers (current and past) have recently done exactly that, earning finalist places in two of Australia’s most prestigious art prizes.
Richard Morris: Finalist, Muswellbrook Art Prize 2026
Arts lecturer Dr Richard Morris has been selected as a finalist in the Muswellbrook Art Prize, one of regional NSW’s most respected acquisitive awards and one of the richest prizes for painting in regional Australia, with $70,000 in prize money across three categories.
Richard’s finalist work, The Estate (2026), is a large-scale painting in oil and acrylic on hardboard and plywood (144 × 120 cm). The work confronts the rapid transformation of regional landscapes - the quiet replacement of native bushland by new housing estates, their bitumen roads, concrete paths, and controlled planting erasing the natural world Richard grew up alongside. It’s a work that is both personally felt and broadly resonant, speaking to questions of belonging, loss, and the cost of development, and it utilises Richard’s unique style of mixed media and found materials.
The painting was exhibited and featured on the prize’s official website during the exhibition period at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre. This is well deserved recognition for the man who manages the entire Visual Arts and Design and Technology programs at Avondale.
Andy Collis: Archibald Prize Finalist
Former Avondale Arts lecturer and much-loved colleague Dr Andy Collis has achieved something many artists aspire to their entire careers: a place among the finalists of the Archibald Prize, Australia’s most celebrated portrait prize.
His finalist work, AKA Sopha Dopha, is an intimate portrait of Sophia Begg, a close family friend and social media influencer with over two million followers, who was featured in Forbes Australia’s ‘30 Under 30’ in December 2025. The portrait is rendered in oil on board with resin, collage, and a silicone phone case, measuring just 15.8 × 8 cm. The intimate scale is deliberate: where Sopha Dopha’s world is one of vast digital reach, Andy’s portrait draws on thousands of shared looks and conversations: the slow, irreplaceable knowledge that only comes from painting someone from life.
“People tell me she’s Sopha Dopha,” Andy says, “but to me, someone who doesn’t use social media at all, she’s just Soph, the open, free-spirited 22-year-old who comes to our house most weeks for Sunday dinner.”
Born in Nottingham and working in Australia since 1989, Andy is a distinguished painter and long-standing art academic, with exhibition credits including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. His work across portraiture, still life, and landscape, including his celebrated “Colour Layer” series, reflects a practice as rigorous as the teaching he brought to our students. Many of our Visual Arts alumni owe their expertise to Andy and to see him achieve this incredible feat feels like a well-deserved recognition.
The School of Arts is built on the belief that great teachers are great practitioners. Richard and Andy embody that ideal, not just as guides to craft, but as artists actively navigating the same challenges, rejections, and breakthroughs their students face. Their achievements remind us that creative courage is practice and that continued practice will be recognised.