Paul Becker doesn't take anything seriously, now he's an eight-time Glover finalist

And certainly not the judges for the Glover Prize, for which Becker just became a finalist for the eighth time.

"I just want to have a bit of fun with everything," Becker said sitting next to his painting, Big Country Nostalgia, a moody-toned depiction of a farmstead outside Ross which earned him his eighth place in the 42 finalists.

"Nothing is that serious."

The Legana painter, whose work is often a realistic construction of somewhere in Tasmania's Midlands at dusk, has entered every year of the Evandale-based, $75,000 landscape art honour since it began in 2004.

He first signed up because he "wondered what it would be like." Now he's one of the competition's most sustained finalists.

"I think I've grown alongside The Glover as an artist; I've changed as a painter because of it," Becker said.

"If there wasn't a Glover, I wouldn't have gone on to paint the way I do, which I love. That's what it's done for me."

His success with the prize - he's placed amongst the finalists in 2004, 2009, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023 and now 2024 - may be because of Glover's single criteria: the painting must be an "exemplary representation of the Tasmanian landscape".

"What does art mean to me? I just want to capture the landscape," Becker said.

"In the middle of the state it's this big country, and I mean it in the way that there are rolling hills and the sky spreads out in a different way in the valley.

"It's just beautiful down there."

Becker's finalist piece, Big Country Nostalgia, is of the Chiswick shearing property in Ross - a grazing property dwarfed by "big skies" and shrouded in cloudy darkness - is exactly his style and what he considers his perfect work.

"There's nothing I can pick wrong with it, which normally I can; it's really rare to have that," he said.

"But this year's the Glover's like the Melbourne Cup - there are so many great artists in there that could win it, but you never know."

The Glover Prize exhibition - which includes finalists like Becker - will begin from Saturday, March 9, to Sunday, March 17, at the Falls Park Pavilion in Evandale. The winner will be announced March 9.