Tribute to dad wins award for Rita

Sydney
28 April 2002

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Tribute to dad wins award for Rita

Rita Isidori, Cardinal Clancy and the prize-winning painting, The Fisherman

Rita Isidori, a 2001 graduate of Beth lehem College, has won the inaugural Cardinal Clancy Prize for Religious Art with her body of work from last year, ‘The Fisherman.

The work is a moving testimony to Rita’s father, to whom it is dedicated, and to their relationship.

It portrays her father’s love of life and fishing but also conveys the colours and textures of life as viewed from different perspectives.

“Just as my father’s illness and his lifelong love of life forced my family to put things in perspective, my work forces the audience both to come close and to step back from the work,” Rita says.

Rita found the subject of the work difficult at times but, she says, in acknowledging her father’s life through the artwork, the experience was worthwhile.

She believes that winning the prize has given her great confidence and that “even in his death he was doing good things for me”. Her father died two years ago.

Mrs Vicki Armstrong, co-ordinator of art at Bethlehem College, said that Rita was “a gifted and committed student who is a great role model for other students.

“Her success shows how creative pursuits are valuable in creating pathways for careers and in providing a powerful means of comm unication for our thoughts and feelings.”

Rita, who was one of Bethlehem College’s high achievers last year with distinctions in Mathematics and shortlisted for Art Express, is now studying commerce/law at Sydney University.

She continues her love of Art by studying at the Julian Ashton Art School.

The Cardinal Clancy Prize is open to students of the Sydney Archdiocese.

Rita received her prize, a $2000 computer from ASI Solutions, at the Exhibition of Religious Art conducted by the Australian Catholic University and the Catholic Education Office.