Selected Art Prizes & Awards

1955 Won the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship, Sydney (with painting Italian Family).
1958 Won the Women’s Weekly Portrait Prize, Sydney, with a portrait of wife Margaret. (The photograph at left is of John and Margaret Rigby viewing the portrait during the 1995 Queensland Art Gallery exhibition, A Time Remembered: Art In Brisbane 1950 to 1975, during which the portrait was on loan from the Newscastle Region Art Gallery.)
1959 Centenary Art Prize Competition, Queensland (Shipbuilding); Caltex Centenary Art Competition (Queen Street, Brisbane)
1960 H.C. Richards Memorial Prize, Brisbane (Cribb Island)
1962 Royal National Association Prize, Brisbane.
1963 Sulman Prize for 1962, Sydney (Children Dancing); Melrose Prize, Adelaide (The Girl’s Room)
1965 Finney’s (David Jones) Annual Art Prize, Brisbane (Nude and the Night)
1966 Lismore Art Prize (Aboriginal Girls)
1968 David Jones Annual Art Prize, Brisbane (A Field for a Child)
1968 Albury Purchase Prize, New South Wales.
1969 Armidale Figurative Prize, New South Wales.
1971 Gold Coast Purchase Prize, Queensland. Naracoorte Acquisitive Exhibition Prize (The Floral Dress)
1974 Gold Coast Purchase Prize, Queensland.
1994 Awarded an Honorary Doctorate for services to the Arts, Griffith University, Qld., Australia.
2001 Honorary Membership of the Royal Queensland Art Society.
2003 Companion, Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences.

NOTE Finalist in numerous Archibald (24), Wynne (24) and Sulman Prizes (21) from the 1953 to the 1999, as well being a finalist in five biennial Moran National Portrait Competitions between 1988 to 2004.