[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="10" gal_title="Art Competition Entries"]

Click to the side of the image above to see all of this year's entries.

Voting has opened to determine which of 46 artists will win this year’s People’s Choice award in Palliative Care Australia’s online art competition.

The entries, which can all be viewed here, include objects, photographs and paintings, each with a short explanation of how the piece fits with the theme Connection With Community.

The People’s Choice winner will receive $1000 prize money.

Entries this year include a painting on coarse hessian by Elizabeth Bennett, titled ‘Grandpa in June’. It is a tribute to contribution her grandfather and the contribution he made to people throughout his life, having lived through less affluent times, many of whom came to visit as his failing health spread.

Artist Hannedora has entered a small macramé, photographed with its shadow, titled ‘Bonds’. The piece is a reflection on working in aged care; its strings, knots and ties highlighting the many connections that affect wellbeing, and the shadow representing the larger network of encounters associated with caring which Hannedora says are often forgotten.

Kerrie Marriott Anderson’s painting, titled ‘A Light Touch’, captures the isolation that can occur when living with a terminal illness and grief. She describes it as living in a bubble, “an invisible barrier that can offer protection but can also keep emotion, conversation, support and even love from being shared”.

This year’s entries also include a dress which is made from used tea bags that have been sewn together. ‘Dying For A Cuppa’ was made by Karen Benjamin who makes many cups of tea for grieving friends and family members in her job working at a funeral home. “At times the grief seems overwhelming,” she says. “The gesture of a cup of tea and the chance to speak openly about death and dying soothes the soul”.

Laura Petruccelli has entered a photograph titled ‘Into the Sun my Son’, which she took of her baby son days before he died. “I took him outside so the sun could kiss his face,” she says. She says outside the hospital they were connected to the community they had looked at through his hospital room window.

Kylee Hoffman’s painting, ‘Many Hands Make a Work of Light’, features a butterfly which symbolises the transition from this life, and hands representing community support. “Though death can be perceived as a time of darkness, through the connection of community, the experience can be one of beauty and light,” she says.

Butterflies also feature in a sculpture titled ‘Butterfly Circle‘ by Renata Swierczynska, who describes them as symbols of the soul that children can see. She says that like people, ideas, beauty, happiness and life, they come and go like a light breeze.

Last year’s People’s Choice award was won by ceramicist Ashley Fiona. Her entry was a photograph of the first porcelain ashkeeper that she sold, which was inspired by the death of her grandfather. She wanted to create something beautiful for her grandmother to keep his ashes in and thought an ashkeeper might also help her grandmother’s healing.

This year, Ashley is one of three judges to choose an overall winner for the art competition, along with Anzara Clark and Margaret Ambridge.

This is the second year Palliative Care Australia has run the online art competition. Winners will be announced in late August. See all of the entries and cast your vote here.