Ex-soldier, flag-clad, gun-toting, ball-gown wearer: who is the real Jacqui Lambie?
A pair of artists has tried to capture the essence of the outspoken independent senator with very different portraits they've entered for the 2015 Archibald Prize.
Tasmanian painter Phillip McKay, who has known Senator Lambie for about four years, depicts her draped in the Australian flag with an expression that looks like it could turn into either a snarl or smile.
But the senator initially had a very different idea: a ball gown and a pistol.
"When we did the sitting she ran out and she got a toy machine gun from K-Mart," McKay told AAP on Monday.
"So I've got quite a few photographs with her posing like that but it didn't sort of work.
"As sensational as that would be, my mother always said, `no guns, Phillip'."
Instead, the artist draped a flag from the senator's office around her shoulders, seeking to show her nationalistic and patriotic nature.
Senator Lambie told him the painting showed her dark side.
Sydney artist Tania McMurtry sought to show the person she met when Senator Lambie sat for her shortly after Christmas, rather than the media stereotype.
"She was soft and pretty and gentle," McMurtry told AAP.
"She doesn't come across like that in the media."
Her oil on board painting is a bare bones depiction of the ex-soldier in a khaki shirt with her face sketched in black and white and minimal coloured shading.
"She's a very strong woman in a very hard place and no matter what you think of some of the other things that she can say, I just admire her guts," McMurtry said.
More than 800 portraits have been entered into the Archibald Prize this year and just a fraction will be hung as exhibition finalists, opening at the Art Gallery of NSW on July 18.
Senator Lambie said it had been a joy to work with both artists.
She offered the gun-and-gown pose suggestion as a tongue-in-cheek way to portray women in the defence force, she said.
"It was around the time the media was poking fun at me and calling me Lambo," she told AAP.
"However, amongst the chuckles and exaggeration, there was a serious message I was thinking of."
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