We are proud to announce that our represented artist, Loribelle Spirovski, has been selected as a finalist in the 2025 Lester Prize, with her poignant oil painting titled Fatherhood.
The portrait captures her husband, acclaimed pianist Simon Tedeschi, in a moment of stillness, reclined on the couch with the family cat, Nana, resting on him. It is a tender, domestic scene—deeply personal and quietly profound.
“I painted my husband Simon as I often find him, reclined on the couch with our cat Nana resting on him.
In a world marked by environmental crisis and political uncertainties, this small domestic moment is a kind of sanctuary. The bond between them—the gentleness, the attentiveness, the quiet familiarity—reminds me that fatherhood is not always loud or declared. Sometimes, it’s soft and consistent, offered without performance.
This painting is a portrait of that love: intimate, strange, and utterly ordinary. It is what family looks like in our home.”
A finalist in one of Australia’s most respected portrait prizes, Spirovski’s work will be exhibited as part of the 2025 Lester Prize exhibition at WA Museum Boola Bardip, from 19 September to 16 November. With a total prize pool of $130,000 across ten categories, the Lester Prize offers vital national recognition for excellence in portraiture.
Fatherhood is a moving reminder of the beauty in the everyday—and a portrait of love that is, as Spirovski notes, “intimate, strange, and utterly ordinary.”
Artwork details:
Loribelle Spirovski
"Fatherhood", 2025
Oil on canvas
120 x 90cm
Subject: Simon Tedeschi
Loribelle Spirovski attended the College of Fine Arts at the University of NSW, graduating in 2012 with a degree in Art Education. Her painting practise works in the interstices between the human figure and space, movement and stillness. Working in a number of simultaneous styles, her work spans traditional portraiture, surrealism and pop art that marries dark and light themes in a single experimental practice.
With nods to historical figures such as de Chirico, Dali and Bacon, Spirovski paints a fragmented world, reflecting the anxieties defining the present age while never relinquishing a sense of hope for the future.
