Callum Worsfold

Callum Worsfold is a Sydney painter and National Art School graduate whose practice is built on looking hard at the real world — portraits, interiors and landscape painted from life, not from photos. In 2025 he was selected as a first-time finalist in the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW with Self-portrait in the studio, a small oil completed in a single session from the mirror. That same commitment to fresh observation underpins his teaching: students learn how to see value, colour and structure on the spot, then turn that seeing into confident paint.

Before the Archibald, Callum was a 2022 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize semi-finalist and a 2024 finalist in the Macquarie Emerging Artist Prize, Lane Cove Art Prize, WWAS 9×5 Prize and KAAF Art Prize. He has exhibited at Goodspace, TAP Gallery and Ochredfern, and as Head Teacher at Welight Art School he has also curated and run gallery exhibitions — so he can talk with students about both making work and getting it in front of an audience.

What students learn from Callum

• How to paint and draw from life: gesture, proportion, light and colour mixing without hiding behind a photograph.
• Portrait skills that travel — the same observational habits that put an Archibald finalist on the wall at AGNSW.
• Plein air practice: responding quickly outdoors, building community around shared looking, and finishing a painting while the light is still honest.
• How representation can carry psychology and symbolism without becoming illustration.
• Studio discipline that maps to real pathways: exhibition-ready work, prize entries, and the professional habits expected in Sydney’s galleries and teaching studios.

Callum’s classes are for students who want employable craft — as well as “creative time.”
You leave with a tighter eye, a repeatable process, and a clearer idea of how observational painting still competes at the highest level in Australian art.