1st Prize RAYMAR Painting Award

Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2026

Sean Layh

Title:

“Antigone” 

Medium & Dimensions:

Oil on panel, 100 x 140cm

About the Artist

Sean Layh is a figurative painter whose large-scale, multi-figure compositions are influenced by classical literature and theatrical traditions. This year, Layh is a finalist in the ARCHIBALD PRIZE, going on to receive the coveted Packing Room prize. Also in 2026 Layh’s paintings won both the prestigious Best in Show and first place in the Figurative category in the 18th Art Renewal Centre’s SALON COMPETITION in New York. Layh is also collaborating with the Australian national theatre company, BELL SHAKESPEARE, to create a multi-figure painting based on Peter Evans’ 2026 production of “Julius Caesar”. From 2023 to 2025, Layh has won multiple awards at the Portrait Society of America, as well as first place in the Figurative category in both the Bold Brush the Almenara international painting competitions. In both 2023 and 2025 Layh’s paintings were exhibited at the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) in Barcelona. This July, Layh’s painting “Antigone” will be on display at Sotheby’s in New York.

“Antigone”: This painting reimagines Sophocles’ tragic heroine Antigone, shown standing defiantly in a grand, ruinous gallery. She cradles a child — an imaginative reference to her son, who appears in the lost Euripidean play The Epigoni — signifying the enduring consequences of resistance and legacy. Behind her hangs Antigone in front of the dead Polynices (1865) by Nikiforos Lytras, anchoring the work within classical and art historical tradition. The empty frame and scattered pages evoke erasure, forgotten memory, and the fragility of cultural inheritance. Through this layered composition I depict the tension between private morality and public law.