A portrait of David Warner wins national award

David Warner is one of the best batters in the world at the moment. The swashbuckling left-handed batsman has won a World Cup, Ashes, Indian Premier League and many such prestigious tournaments. Recently, he also won the ‘Sports Dad of the Year’ award. Now, the Australian opener has written his name among the list of winners of an art prize.

No, Warner has not created anything spectacular. But his portrait has won the 2017 Bald Archy award. The Bald Archy award is a famous portrait competition held in Australia. It emphasises on caricature portraits. The portrait, featuring the batsman playing a shot wearing the baggy greens was painted by James Brennan.

With this, Brennan is now a three-time winner of the award. “I just love the way he plays his cricket. The way he bats, the way he fields. He’s aggressive, entertaining. He can make a quick hundred before lunch. It’s great to see a gallery with a bit of laughter, a snicker, a guffaw. Most galleries are probably the opposite to that,” he said while talking to cricket.com.au. Brennan will receive a cash prize of $10,000.

The title of Brennan’s work is ‘Pocket Rocket’. When he was asked about his choice, he said: “I chose Dave because I’m a huge fan of the way he plays cricket and I love watching him come out to open for Australia and put a big score on quickly. Aggressive and entertaining in his batting and fielding I was hoping to capture that in my caricature of him. He also has a pretty distinctive face and I saw that as a great challenge as well to portray that accurately but with a fair bit of exaggeration and humour as well. He had an amazing summer of cricket in Australia which captured my imagination and I think every cricket fan’s imagination and that sparked the initial idea of doing a painting of Dave Warner.”

“My painting is a celebration of the most explosive batsman in the world with a tiny dig at his vertically challenged stature, this little Bantam Rooster has the heart of a lion!” he added.

When Mitchell Johnson played Miley Cyrus!

Warner is the not the first cricket to have been the subject of the Bald Archy winner. In 1998, former Australian spinner Shane Warne’s portrait won the award. In 2014, the honour was bestowed upon former Aussie pacer Mitchell Johnson. In order to demonstrate the speedster’s fiery spells at the Ashes, the painter used references from famous singer Miley Cyrus’s song ‘Wrecking Ball’.