MELBOURNE artist Tony Sowersby’s “Sabine Desrondaux, Woman of Letters” has won the 2022 People’s Choice Award for the 2022 Darling Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery.

His portrait, which won him a $10,000 cash prize, captures postie Sabine Desrondaux, with whom he interacted with during the pandemic and he describes the work as “a tribute to the courage and determination of all those who kept society functioning, and you can see those attributes on her face.” he said.

Meantime, Luther Cora’s portrait, “Flora and Fauna, Giara: White Cockatoo”, has won the People’s Choice Award for the 2022 National Photographic Portrait Prize, also at the Portrait Gallery.

The portrait, which won him $5000, is one of a series Queensland artist Luther Cora took of his daughter Giara in a makeshift studio in his Gold Coast home during lockdown.

“I put up a black sheet in my loungeroom, made some floral head-pieces out of native flowers and took photos of my daughters… it was something to do during lockdown,” he says.  Cora, a Yugambeh/Bundalung man, Cora says the photo also reflects his own thoughts about indigenous First Nations people, “and if we are still classed as flora and fauna”.

The National Portrait Gallery Prize closes on October 9.