Solar Art Prize

Welcome to the Solar Art Prize-Caring for Our Planet site!

This South Australian competition aims to celebrate nature and the environment, and promote the reduction of carbon emissions, in the fight against global warming.

The Solar Art Prize-Caring for Our Planet has completed its seventeenth with prizes to the value of $32,000 awarded in March 2026, in the form of vouchers for solar products.  Over these seventeen years, prizes totalling $641,640, mostly in solar products, have been awarded.

This privately funded merit-based prize is judged by three different independent judges each year.  All mediums are welcome.

Adelaide philanthropist Pip Fletcher is founder, coordinator, curator and major sponsor of the Solar Art Prize.   Natural Technology Systems of Prospect have also sponsored a major prize from 2016 to 2024.

Painting of Pip Fletcher.  Artist: Cathi Steer, “Concentration”, oil, 2016

Pip Fletcher created the Solar Art Prize in 2010.  She has organised it annually and has been the major sponsor ever since.

The Solar Art Prize – Caring for Our Planet – is a unique major art prize where several artists each win vouchers for thousands of dollars worth of solar products (solar panels, hot water services, wind power or batteries and now efficient refrigerators) all provided by South Australian installers.  It has attracted a very high standard of diverse and imaginative work in every medium over the years.

The Prize helps maintain Global Warming and its ramifications in the public eye when some are tempted to be fatalistic and give up trying to do anything. Although it gives a good return on their investment, many still feel they cannot afford solar energy. The Prize gives the artists the chance to win solar vouchers for themselves or their friends in South Australia, thereby lowering their carbon footprint and at the same time saving them money.

Sponsor Natural Technology Systems has honoured the vouchers presented to winners since 2010, and from 2016 to 2024 they sponsored one of the major prizes themselves.