The Darling Portrait Prize is a national prize for Australian portrait painting which honours the legacy of L Gordon Darling, who was instrumental in establishing the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.
Mr Wein’s portrait of his 92-year-old grandfather, ‘The Epitome of Hymie’ was based on a photo taken during the pandemic.
“My grandfather is 92 and I went to visit him, and I was sitting in his office, and he was watching a Zoom on his phone in his office at night,” he said.
“I saw that and I had to take a few photos, it was exactly who he is — 92, on a Zoom meeting with the board of the building. It was the perfect example of who he is.
“Only afterwards, I found out about the Darling Portrait Prize, and I knew I had to paint that one.”
Mr Wein is relatively new to the world of art, and started painting in 2014 after an injury.
“I was injured in military service, and the rehabilitation was about a year all in all,” he said.
“A lot of the time I was bed-ridden and I started to draw and paint for art therapy and it really helped me.
“It really improved my mental health after the injury.
“I decided to take it on full-time, and I’ve been painting ever since.”
Mr Wein said he was drawn to portraits as a way to capture what a person is going through, and to express what he has been through.
“You see a lot of pain and a lot of expression in the face,” he said.
“That’s what everybody looks at, you see the person and their face and you see all the facial expressions of what they’re going through.
“When I started painting I had a very different style, now I’ve refined it to that kind of realism, but people used to say it was a bit harsh or at times a bit scary.
“That was the art therapy coming out, it was helping me express what I’d been through.”
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