2023 Judges

Chief Judge: Erika Gofton

The CAS23 Chief Judge, Erika Gofton is a highly credentialled art practitioner with qualifications and residencies from the UK, USA, and Tasmania.

Her art practice includes many successful solo & group exhibitions in Victoria, interstate, and Singapore. She has been a finalist in several reputable Art Prizes including:

2019 The Nillumbik Art Prize Melbourne, 2018 Collie Prize Collie Art Gallery WA, Redland Art Prize, Redland Art Gallery QLD, Jacaranda Drawing Prize Grafton Regional Gallery, Wyndham Art Prize Victoria, Albany Art Prize WA, 2017 Kennedy Prize Kennedy Foundation SA

Erika has been a teacher of Drawing at The Victorian College of the Arts and since 2010, the Director/Owner and teacher The Art Room (www.the-art-room.com.au)

Assistant Judge: Robert Knight

Artist’s Statement
My goal as an artist is to convey a message of beauty that I see in my everyday life, through the mediums of painting and drawing. My style varies from realist contemporary to a design oriented format. I paint spiritual landscapes that include rainforest, cityscapes, atmospheric aerial views and seascapes… Whatever I see that I love, is what I paint; to share my passion with the viewer.

Rob has won many awards over an extensive career, including Best Oil at Camberwell Art Show, has had successful solo exhibitions in Victoria and Canberra, has been an invited artist in many group shows, is a Fellow of AGRA, and is a popular demonstrator and workshop tutor.

Assistant Judge: Louise Foletta

Louise has been painting and exhibiting her works for many years and has accumulated a body of work that has earned awards and acclamation.  Her work is a joy to look at and a great investment.

Louise’s work is grounded in the experience of the landscape itself. Some of the works are conceived and completed at the scene and reflect the immediacy of that experience. What is attempted is not only the impressionistic rendering of a lively, light-modulated surface, but also a transition of the inner response to the land onto the paper. The paintings owe less to the retina than to the soul. That is why the more modernist preoccupations with the inherent values of colour, texture, surface, and design inform Louise’s work so consistently. She has won many awards with the most recent being a finalist in the prestigious Hans Heysen Award.