Lewer's Wallace Trust Paramount Award win includes a six-month residency, valued at more than $38,000, at the International Studio and Curatorial Programme, in New York. .
Otago artists Heather Straka, the University of Otago 2008 Frances Hodgkins fellow; Ruth Cleland and Gary McMillan all won major prizes at the 17th annual awards, announced by Sir Paul Reeves at a function in the Aotea Centre.
Straka claimed the second prize, the Kaipara Foundation Award, which includes a $20,000 three-month residency at Altes Spital, in Switzerland, for her oil painting Repeat After Me. Amanda #2.
Straka was also placed in the 2006 awards, with her oil painting Pacific Rose.
The Park Lane Wallace Trust Development Award, a three-month residency, valued at more than $18,000, at the Vermont Studio Centre in the United States, was awarded to Cleland for her acrylic work Level 2.
Judge Dick Frizzell said there was "a certain organic pairing" in the Straka and Cleland works "Both of which are full of energy, yet dark and brooding - an obsessional intensity," Frizzell said.
McMillan claimed the Jury Prize with his acrylic painting Motorway.
Cleland and McMillan are both former Otago Polytechnic Art School tutors, now resident in Auckland.
