Design and Art Australia Online

painter, sketcher, printmaker, illustrator and animator. After studying art in the mid 1970s, Harding travelled through Europe, then returned to Australia, where he developed a reputation for his painterly images while also working in illustration and animation.

Brett Ballard, reviewing an exhibition in 2005, commented that “We can not think of Nicholas Harding without thinking of paint. Luscious, buttery paint. What Harding does with paint is important but of equal importance is what he paints. Harding is after all a painter of subjects…”

Among many awards and honours, Harding won both the Archibald and Dobell Prizes in 2001. He was a finalist in the Archibald 19 times. He undertook four residencies at the University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts’ Cicada Press since 2001.

David Marr remembered that he “worked and worked and worked all the time.”
In 2022 he was awarded the Wynne Prize for his painting Eora, a painting that evoked the surviving beauty of the landscape around Sydney.

Writers:

Date written:

2011

Last updated:

2022