Rotorua artist Toni Armstrong named Adam Portraiture Award finalist

Rotorua artist Toni Armstrong’s portrait, George, is a finalist in the 2026 Adam Portraiture Award.

A Rotorua artist’s “edgy” entry for the Adam Portraiture Award was confronting for her subject.

Toni Armstrong painted her good friend George Andrews.

It is one of 43 works selected from 429 entries for the biennial finalist exhibition at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata in Wellington from May 21 to August 9.

Most of the portraits then tour galleries nationally.

Armstrong is self-taught, painting and drawing for more than 30 years.

She chose to paint Andrews as she knew him “so well” – something that is important when capturing a person’s “character”, Armstrong said.

The pair met at an art class about 15 years ago.

Andrews was a sculptor, and the two spent “a lot of time” sculpting together while Armstrong recovered from foot surgery.

In the portrait, Armstrong focused on capturing his sculpting “square fingers” and “a bit of a smirk” reflecting Andrews’ “quiet sense of humour”.

“I’ve done the eyes so [the portrait] watches you as you move around ... trying to catch how he observes people.

“[Andrews] thinks it’s very good and his family think it’s very much like him,” she said.

Though he found it “confronting” – it was Armstrong’s most close-up portrait yet.

“It’s like having your face up close to a mirror,” Armstrong said – something “hard for anyone to confront” on some days.

But that made it “edgy”, she said.

The portrait took shape over six months, working in little bits. Armstrong would paint, observe and refine.

Rotorua artist Toni Armstrong’s portrait, George, is a finalist in the 2026 Adam Portraiture Award.

“You can be a millimetre out, and it doesn’t quite look like the person,” Armstrong said.

“It will frustrate me until I know it’s right ... until [I] get that feeling of that person.”

She often kept the painting in front of her in the lounge, going “back and forth” making changes.

Armstrong, who is self-taught, works from her home studio in the “very quiet and rural” Ōkere Falls, which she said was “good” for her painting.

She enjoyed painting people, as well as birds, flowers and anything colourful.

She described it as a “difficult competition”, with “really talented” artists from across New Zealand.

After finishing a recent series for the Morrinsville Gallery, she was taking a short break – but has started sketching her son-in-law.

Toni Armstrong with her portrait of former Rotorua mayor Steve Chadwick, which was selected as a finalist in the 2022 Adam Portraiture Award.

It is her third time as a finalist. Her previous portraits included former Rotorua mayor Steve Chadwick in 2022 and her father, Wally, in 2018.

Entries for the Adam Portraiture Award were required to be painted portraits of living New Zealanders, created from at least one live sitting or study from life.

Brian Wood, New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata director, said this created a “deeper sense of connection” between the artist and the sitter, with “more immediacy and presence”.

Wood said the range of materials and approaches showed how “expansive contemporary portraiture can be”.

Awards judge Jude Rae selected the finalists and said it was an “enormous challenge”.

Rae would decide the winner on May 20, awarding them $30,000. The runner-up prize and People’s Choice Award would each receive $2500.

Annabel Reid is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, based in Rotorua. Originally from Hawke’s Bay, she has a Bachelor of Communications from the University of Canterbury.