{"id":34878,"date":"2025-09-21T12:06:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T12:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/34878\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T12:06:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T12:06:16","slug":"sydney-doctor-who-paints-as-a-hobby-takes-20000-art-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/34878\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney doctor who paints as a hobby takes $20,000 art prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\ufeff Sydney<\/a> doctor who took up painting as a hobby less than a year ago has taken out a lucrative art prize.<\/p>\n

Sean Lee beat 43 other finalists and hundreds of entrants in the $20,000 Eckersley’s Art & Craft Prize with his still life My Pantry Essentials, which depicts the sauces and ingredients that were commonplace in the kitchen while growing up in Sydney as a child of Chinese and Taiwanese migrants.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old paediatric registrar from Castle Hill\ufeff has been painting for just 12 months.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/The paediatric registrar only started painting a year ago. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

“I’m rapt, honestly this is a dream come true for me,” Lee said.<\/p>\n

“To take out such a prestigious prize, I can’t believe it.”\ufeff<\/p>\n

A true novice, Lee didn’t have a case for his artwork, and said he almost destroyed it just getting it to the exhibition.<\/p>\n

\ufeff”The day I rocked up to present my painting, I remember it was a Tuesday, it was bucketing rain, and I was worried it’d get damaged if it got wet,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/The Eckersley’s Art & Craft Prize winner could have been destroyed by rain before it could be judged. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

“\ufeffI had an old, ripped t-shirt in my room, so I improvised and wrapped it in that, just to keep it dry as I ran inside.<\/p>\n

“Luckily, it didn’t get any rain on it, but I was drenched – it was a small price to pay.”<\/p>\n

The artwork is now on display with other finalists at the Hazelhurst Arts Centre at Gymea till September 23.\ufeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A\ufeff Sydney doctor who took up painting as a hobby less than a year ago has taken out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-34878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}