The National Art School has awarded leading Australian artists Karla Dickens and Euan Macleod the 2024 National Art School Fellowship, the fine art school's most significant honour.

The National Art School Fellowship is an annual award that acknowledges the exceptional achievements of eminent visual artists, arts administrators, writers, advocates and academics who have made outstanding contributions to the visual arts community in Australia.

Dickens, a proud Wiradjuri woman also of Irish and German descent, living and working in Lismore, on Bundjalung Country, graduated from the National Art School with a degree in Fine Arts in 2000 and has had an impressive career spanning more than three decades.

Through her multidisciplinary art practice – painting, photography, video, collage, sculpture and installation – she is driven to communicate her cross-cultural heritage, as well as her life experience as a mother, environmentalist and activist.

Using recycled everyday materials, Dickens explores notions of persistence amidst inherent violence and misunderstanding. Raw, daring and hard to confine, her meticulously fabricated works emanate truthfulness and honesty, often cannibalising existing works and creating them anew.

Dickens has exhibited extensively internationally and throughout Australia. She has participated in countless group exhibitions including the AGSA Adelaide Biennial (2020), the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020), The National: Australian Art Now (2017) and Defying Empire Triennial at The National Gallery of Australia (2017).

In 2016 her paintings were projected on the sails of Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid LIVE and she was recently celebrated at Campbelltown Arts Centre (2022–23) with a 30 year survey exhibition. Her work is held in leading institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, National Museum of Australia, Australian National Maritime Museum and Art Gallery of Western Australia.

"Back in 1991 I received a notification of my acceptance to study at the National Art School. On entering the gates I had no idea the journey I would embark upon," she said.

"I loved my days at NAS, the meeting of other like-minded people, the teachers, the thrill of wanting to learn for the first time and being rounded up to leave at night by security who had to close the gates. NAS introduced me to a passion and way of life I didn't know existed.

"I am completely humbled to stand with Euan Macleod in 2024 being awarded a Fellowship at the National Art School. Without my ancestors behind me, the Wirdajuri warriors, the wild Irish rebels and the tough Germans I would never have had the courage and strength to live as an artist. Thank you, NAS, for nurturing artists and acknowledging their creative efforts."

The inaugural National Art School fellowship was awarded to Colin Lanceley AO in 2022, and since then 37 Australians have been honoured for their exceptional achievement or service within the professional arts domain. This includes artists such as Elisabeth Cummings OAM, Margaret Olley AO AC, Chris O'Doherty aka Reg Mombassa, Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher James AO, Fiona Foley AO and Ken Unsworth AM, as well as curators, gallerists and philanthropists including John Kaldor AO, Roslyn Oxley OAM, Frank Watters OAM and Wendy Whiteley OAM. The 2023 Fellowships were awarded to artists Mike Parr and Joan Ross.

Macleod, a New Zealand-born artist, was awarded a Diploma of Fine Arts (Painting) by the Ilam School of Fine Arts, Canterbury University, in 1979, before moving to Sydney in 1981.

Drawings on his early life experience of walking and climbing the remote alpine and coastal wilderness of New Zealand's South Island, the essence of Macleod's work is in the relationship between natural landscape and the lone roaming figures that appear in each of his compositions, often creating his work in nature and transforming each dramatic scene into an extension of the wanderers inner psyche.

Over his 40-year career, Macleod has held more than fifty solo shows in New Zealand and Australia and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions in Australasia and internationally. He was awarded the Archibald Prize in 1999 for his Self-portrait/head like a hole and the Sulman Prize in 2001, for his Exquisite corpse with fire. He was also awarded the New South Wales Parliament's inaugural Plein Air painting prize in 2008 and the Tattersall's Landscape Prize in 2000 and 2009.

His work is held in the collections of major institutions in Australia including National Gallery of Australia as well as many overseas including Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Macleod said it is a "huge honour" to be selected for a fellowship at the National Art School.

"To join a group that includes some of the artists I most admire and respect is a huge acknowledgment for me as a painter," he said.

"Having had the privilege of teaching at NAS for nearly ten years, I have firsthand knowledge of what an inspiring and positive environment it is for anyone considering a life as a visual artist. I was able to witness the commitment at all levels of the school to the education and wellbeing of the students resulting in the best outcomes for them".

National Art School CEO Steven Alderton said the School is "honoured to award the 2024 Fellowships to alumni Karla Dickens, one of Australia's leading contemporary First Nations artists, and the prolific multi award-winning New Zealand-born artist Euan Macleod".

"Both Dickens' and Macleod's life and work have an enduring impact on the arts in Australia and continue to inspire the students at the National Art School," he said.