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In the last four years, Manilla-born artist Loribelle Spirovski had come close to giving up on painting while nursing a debilitating injury that sends pins and needles into her hands and makes holding a brush difficult and painful.
On Thursday, Spirovski was named winner of the 2025 Archibald Prize People’s Choice award with a joyful portrait of yidaki (didgeridoo) virtuoso William Barton, painted entirely with gloved fingers and hands.
Loribelle Spirovski paints with her fingers.Credit: Loribelle Spirovksi
She had been inspired to throw her paintbrush away when she worked on Barton’s portrait in her studio and played the musician’s renowned composition, Birdsong at Dusk, as background music.
Spirovski had first asked Barton to sit for her after a concert last October at the Sydney Opera House featuring both Barton and Spirovski’s husband, concert pianist Simon Tedeschi.
“As the music began, my hand set the brush aside, and I dipped my finger into the soft, pliant paint. I turned the volume up, the music guiding me,” she recounted. “Without a brush, painting was almost painless. As the portrait painted itself, I felt alive in a way I hadn’t for a very long time.”
Spirovski’s tactile portrait was the clear favourite of 40,842 people who visited the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2025 exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW. This is the highest total number of votes ever received since the $5000 prize was first awarded in 1988.
Spirovski said she was guided by the music of Barton.Credit: Sam Mooy
It’s the fourth time lucky for Spirovski, who had been a finalist in the 2017 Archibald Prize for her portrait of John Bell, in 2018 for Nicholas Hope and in 2019 for Meg and Amos, a portrait of singer, songwriter and musician Megan Washington and her young son.
Spirovski was overjoyed: “I am infinitely grateful to William for allowing me to paint him and so humbled by everyone’s responses to the work. It has been a difficult few years and this whole experience is the most beautiful reprieve and reward.”
2025 Archibald Prize winner Julie Fragar, right, and her subject Justene Williams at the Art Gallery of NSW on Friday.Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong
The announcement wraps up the Archibald Prize season for 2025. Four-time Archibald finalist Julie Fragar won this year’s $100,000 Archibald Prize for her phantasmagorical portrait of fellow artist Justene Williams, titled “Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene)“. Fragar was the 13th woman to win since the award’s inception in 1921.
She was named as best among 57 finalists for Australia’s leading award for portraiture by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW. Another set of best friends took out the Packing Room Prize, with Abdul Abdullah painting Jason Phu for No mountain high enough.
Loribelle Spirovski’s Archibald Prize 2025 finalist and People’s Choice winner, ‘Finger painting of William Barton’.Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter
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