People / TV

Jamie Preisz presents Kirin

“I met Kirin [J Callinan] at a party on the Colo River a little while ago. He played guitar on a bunch of karaoke songs. Despite how cheesy every song was, he was staunch on his pedals, stomping away at them until his guitar was a percussive instrument, like Rowland. I next saw him at Laneway Festival. He was wearing these tight 70s Aussie squash shorts with a white collared shirt, doing the salsa with Agnes DeMarco (Mac DeMarco’s mum). I think it was at that moment that I thought I wanted to paint him.”

For artist Jamie Preisz and musician Kirin J. Callinan, this is where the creative relationship began. It culminated in a portrait: an oil on canvas study of “over the top Romanticism” fusing painter and subject – now a semifinalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize.

In celebration of Preisz’s nomination we take it back to the film by Mark Collins that captured the process, croissants and all.