How a high school student became Portrait Artist of the Year

Jasmine 'Jazz' Lancaster Merton was meant to be on Year 12 camp.

But instead, the 17-year-old rolled up to a warehouse in Sydney, armed with boxes of coloured pencils and a growing sense of trepidation.

Along with 53 others, Jazz had submitted a self-portrait and then been selected to compete for the title of Australia's Portrait Artist of the Year.

"I caught wind pretty immediately that I was going to be the youngest one there," the North Sydney teen says with a laugh. 

"And from that, definitely the least experienced in anything."

In her heat, Jazz had to create a portrait of singer Casey Donovan in four hours. She was just excited to be in the room with so many real-life artists.

"I wasn't really anticipating going very far in the competition," she says.

"It was more like, 'Wow, I'm meeting all these people who also really like art, who are artists'. It was just a really great experience to be able to meet people on the path that I want to go down."

Not only was her portrait deemed the best that round, Jazz impressed the judges again with her detailed portrait of Marcia Hines in the semi-final.

And in the final round, Jazz's bright portrait of INXS icon Kirk Pengilly led them to praise her "wonderful artistic sensibility" and "incredible level of skill".

In the end, she won the whole competition.

Dubbed this year's Portrait Artist of the Year, Jazz was commissioned to paint a portrait of actor and entertainer Justine Clarke, to be hung in the National Portrait Gallery.

But this isn't Jazz's first big win.

'I think I just really like people'

Looking back now, Jazz struggles to remember a time in her life when she wasn't "doing or into art".

Taking the subject at high school, the teenager's passion grew, and her bedroom soon doubled as her studio. Portraits quickly became her favourite style.

"I don't really paint or draw anything much else; I think I just really like people," she says.

"I really like that people sort of customise themselves in different ways. And there's an infinite amount of possibilities of what people can look like."

In 2025, her mum suggested she enter the Archibald Prize for younger artists, the Young Archies. She decided to give it a go, painting "all day, every day, for a couple of weeks".

Her self-portrait 'My Name is Jazz' won the prize for 16 to 18-year-olds.

"It was the first sort of real recognition, the first step to being like, 'Oh, OK, people actually do like what I can make'," she says.

Still, nothing prepared her for the whirlwind after her Portrait Artist win

First came the meeting with her sitter, Justine Clarke; taking photos and sketches; planning her composition; then, the painstaking work of building up an oil painting of a face known by people around the country.

"It was not really a chore or anything to be staring at pictures of her face every day," laughs Jazz.

"It was just really weird because I've never really done a sitting or a commission for someone who wasn't myself."

Jazz also had assignments for school due, and was struggling to juggle the load.

"It was one of those things where it's an amazing opportunity, I'm so grateful for it, it just cuts so much time out of the limited time I already had," she says.

"It was a bit of a priorities call, where I had to go, 'What actually should take up more of my time here, is it this life-changing commission, or is it my ATAR?'"

With support from her school, Jazz worked hard to get the portrait completed in time, and it is hanging proudly on the white walls of the Canberra gallery.

Justine Clarke erupted with love for the painting when it was unveiled, as did the judges and crowd, but Jazz says she's still getting used to other people reacting to her work — particularly when it's being filmed.

"The portrait was something that I'd had just downstairs in a studio for the last number of weeks, and it becomes a really personal thing — so sharing it with a TV crew and the audience, it was really daunting," she says.

"But it was also absolutely lovely to see what people had to say and how they thought of it."

Now Jazz is firmly focused on finishing school — exams start soon.

She is planning a gap year, with some commissions already coming in from people she knows, and "taking opportunities that come". Then she would love to go to art school, to meet other artists and see what a career in art could be like.

"[Before the show] I'd never really met actually professional artists," she says.

"So it was something where I went, 'Wow, there's people who do have the courage to pursue that.'"

After that, there is only possibility.

"I am just so stoked that I have told the world that I love art, and that's something that I am going to keep doing forever."

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