‘An enormous spiritual presence’ wins Blake Prize for artist

Fiona Lewis's untitled Human Justice Award winner.

THERE can’t be many winners of the Blake Prize who were ordained in the Russian Orthodox Church, let alone winners who once sang on stage with the Bee Gees at a Christmas gala.

But Brisbane’s Leonard Brown – who yesterday won the prestigious $20,000 first prize in Australia’s annual award for religious art – can boast both in a spiritual journey that has taken most of his 61 years.

Brown’s painstaking and deceptively simple abstract painting If You Put Your Ear Close, You’ll Hear it Breathing pipped other more graphic and controversial works, including pedophilia in the Catholic Church (Rodney Pople) and racism (Fiona White, who won the $5000 prize for human justice). The three judges described Brown’s as ”a work with an enormous spiritual presence [and] outstanding visual intelligence”.