Rachel Payne MP
Rachel Payne MP is a Member of the Victorian Legislative Council in Melbourne, and a passionate supporter of issues such as women’s rights, homelessness solutions, LGBTQIA+ advocacy, and cannabis legalisation. I’ve known her for over two decades, and I’ve become familiar with her family background, personality quirks, and emotional nuances; in other words, many of her character’s subtleties that inevitably fall through the cracks of her media-portrayed persona. Because I’ve known her for so many years, I’ve been able to see how her personality and beliefs have not just created her political policies, but also how Rachel the person and Rachel the policymaker have become intertwined with each other. It is precisely these aspects that my portrait attempts to capture — not merely highlight what the public has already seen, but present a facet of Rachel that they previously hadn’t. Along with the oil on canvas that I use to paint almost all my portraits, I painted this one along with actual cannabis leaves buried within the layers of paint, which I figured was fitting with her beliefs and political policies in mind.