When Loribelle Spirovski was studying art at high school, the main source of inspiration for her major HSC work was Cherry Hood’s portrait of concert pianist Simon Tedeschi – a haunting watercolour in which a shirtless Tedeschi, then 20, stares directly at the viewer with piercing blue eyes. 

Little did Spirovski know then that she would meet Tedeschi through one of her own paintings and they would marry in 2017.

Hood’s portrait won the 2002 Archibald Prize. Spirovski is a finalist in this year’s Archibald with a portrait of didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton, whom she met through Tedeschi.

Loribelle Spirovski

Loribelle Spirovski with her two studies of William Barton, Dreaming Will (left) and Study for a Portrait of William Barton (right). Photo courtesy of Loribelle Spirovski

It’s her fourth time in the Archibald, having been represented with portraits of singer-songwriter Megan Washington in 2019, actor Nicholas Hope in 2018 and actor/director John Bell in 2017. She met Bell when he and Tedeschi collaborated on a performance of Enoch Arden (Tennyson’s poem set to music by Richard Strauss).

Born in Manila to a Filipino mother and a Serbian father, Spirovski arrived in Australia in...