The 57th Blake Prize for Religious Art

A Local Girl Comes Home is based on the personal story of two of Tucker's close friends. As Tucker explains, "My friends who have been modeling for me for years became pregnant and I was inspired to create a work that told a story both personal and universal. Their story is a general one that continues through the generations. In this work, I've told their tale through a procession, which is an archet ypal image, seen in many cultures. The inspiration for this work are Egyptian hieroglyphics, pre-Renaissance Christian sculpture, and work which I saw at the 'Goddess Divine Energy' exhibition at the Art Gallery Of New South Wales in 2007. My aim was to use my western understanding to tell a story that had been told in many other ways in other cultures. Instead of having one female figure with six arms as depicted in Hinduism for example, I created multiple figures of the one woman three times to form a procession. She is coming home to begin her new life as a mother bearing the symbolic attributes of the journey."

Born in London in 1950, David Tucker emigrated to Australia in his mid-twenties and then established a home in Dundurrabin on the Northern Tablelands of NSW ten years l ater where he has remained working in a richly rural environment which he considers vital to his creative output. He is an established regional artist, who has had many exhibitions at the Newcastle Regional Art Museum and the Brenda May Gallery, amongst ot hers. He has worked as a sculptor for twenty years.