Bill Leak

Who is Bill Leak?

Bill Leak is a cartoonist and painter, primarily of portraits. He is the daily editorial cartoonist on The Australian newspaper. He has won the Walkley Awards nine times.

Leak has entered the Archibald Prize at least 13 times, and was hung 11 times. These included portraits of Donald Bradman in 1989, Malcolm Turnbull in 1994, Graham Richardson in 1995, Tex Perkins in 1997, Gough Whitlam in 1998, Sir Les Patterson in 2000 and Robert Hughes in 2001. He won the Packing Room Prize twice and also won the People's Choice Award for Malcolm Turnbull. In addition two paintings of him by other artists have also won the People's Choice Award: a painting by Josonia Palaitis in 1995, and one by Esther Erlich in 2000. He "is widely regarded by good judges as the best painter never to have won the Archibald prize, an omission many of them regard as one of the greatest travesties of Australian art".

He was interviewed in the 2005 Peter Berner documentary about the Archibald Prize called Loaded Brush.

In 2007 he ran into trouble by portraying the then leader of the opposition Kevin Rudd as Tintin. This was resolved by Leak promising to not profit from any sales of cartoons from this series.