The Fountain of Life and Death is Natalie Britten's most intricate work yet. Photo / Supplied
Artists have revealed the hours, weeks, and sometimes months of work poured into pieces they've entered into the controversial Parkin Drawing Prize amidst an uproar over the winning work.
The competition's judging process has come under fire after it was discovered the winning piece, Forward Slash by Poppy Lekner, looked similar to an artwork created five years ago by an American artist.
Lekner's piece is a collection of forward slashes printed with a typewriter on an a4 piece of paper.
She was crowned the winner of the competition last week, out of 482 entries from artists around the country. Her first place position earned her a $25,000 prize.
But the honeymoon period after Lekner's win was short-lived, with a fellow entrant comparing her work to another piece by Colorado artist Joel Swanson, also titled Forward Slash.
Like Lekner's piece, Swanson's was a strikingly similar collection of slashes on a white page, done on a typewriter.
Both pieces bear a resemblance to an earlier work from the 60s.
Lekner has defended her work, saying she did not know of Swanson's piece until after she won the prize.
"My work was made in good faith and was my reaction to my experiences and was for me an intimate meditation and mark-making experience," she said in a statement.
Head judge Charlotte Davy also said the piece stood on its own merits.
"We are confident that there has been no plagiarism with the prize-winning work – in our view the similarities are coincidental and the artists are each working in a different context with differing concerns," she said.
Now other entrants are speaking up about the work they put into the competition, and their disdain for what they believe has become a "conceptual art" competition, rather than one focused on drawing.
"I feel like traditional drawing is not even much a part of the conversation anymore. It is as if once the drawing actually looks like something, it is no longer interesting to the judges," said Wellington artist Tatyana Kulida.
"It leaves the art scene representation as well as the tastes of New Zealanders under-served because they are left to look at the piles of carpet and back slashes feeling like they are not smart enough to understand something that the judges and the creators of those works somehow are."
Kulida, who has entered the competition every year for the last five years, said diversity of taste was important, but other art practices shouldn't be excluded in favour of promoting "shocking" pieces.
"Its novelty wears off fast while Rembrandts still captivate and move humans to tears - as they will continue doing as long as there are human eyes to look upon them."
Another entrant, Alan MacDonald, said he had spent 100 hours on one of his pieces that had gone into the competition.
Another of his works took 50 hours to complete.
Meanwhile one of this year's 76 finalists has revealed she spent 300 hours working on her piece, The Fountain of Life and Death.
Artist Natalie Britten said the piece, which was more than two years in the making, was her most intricate work to date.
"Some of the work I do takes months or years to finish depending on how intricate and big the piece is. Even the smaller works can take weeks or months - time and patience really is a virtue.
"Deciding to enter the Parkin Drawing Prize and being accepted is such an honour and big deal for me," she said.
"I work on my artwork tirelessly, so being accepted is recognition of all the hard work I put into this piece. The last few months before the deadline were particularly full on."
The Parkin Drawing Prize exhibition season runs until August 30 at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Gallery at Queens Wharf, Wellington.
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