NEAR-tragedy has turned to triumph for Captains Flat Rd artist Kerry McInnis with news that she has been selected as a finalist in the NSW Parliament Plein Air Art Prize.

Her selected work is “Our Burnt Dam,” a landscape painting of the devastated dam on the property she shares with her partner, the sculptor Mike McGregor. Caught up in the bushfires at Carwoola earlier this year, they were lucky enough to have the firefighters saved their house and studios but the rest of the property was severely damaged.

The Prize and exhibition, an annual event, is an acquisitive art prize of $20,000, awarded for the best ‘plein air’ [outdoor] painting of a NSW subject. Works by the finalists and semi-finalists will be exhibited at the Parliament of NSW,

And that’s not all. McInnis, who was a finalist in the 2015 Archibald Prize, she has also been notified that her  portrait, “Mantlepiece Treasures,” depicting McGregor in front of a mantelpiece of knick-knacks, has made the semi-final cut for the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, the richest portrait prize in Australia.

NSW Parliament Plein Air Art Prize, Parliament House, Macquarie Street, Sydney, October 3-27. The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Juniper Hall, 250 Oxford Street, Paddington, Sydney, opens on October 19.