Janine

“I’ve always loved the bush, I was very lucky to grow up with parents who instilled that love and appreciation. Sadly, many Australians don’t have that love of the bush, I think, seeing it as drab, scratchy and fire-prone and full of snakes and spiders, without big showy flowers. Since colonisation it’s largely been about getting rid of the bush. Some people even think the bush only belongs in parks, to be visited, not part of your daily existence. And a lot of people now see it as a threat. I’m sad that it’ll be seen as a problem, an enemy. I make pictures out of botanical materials, to make a window onto that world, for people to see what’s there, to show them what’s unique and beautiful about it. I mostly use a circle, it’s a simple shape, it also reminds me of what you see through a microscope or a telescope, a cell or a planet, it’s calming and soothing. I first studied a Bachelor of Design and majored in Visual Communication and then spent years running my own business where my clients were government or private organisations. Once my art practice started to take over, I considered the bush to be my client. I’m expressing things about it and telling its story. My life’s work now is to be a communicator for the bush. I particularly love the mallee, it’s so special. But unfortunately, where I grew up, in the Murray Mallee, most of it is gone, there’s very, very little left. When we came to Kangaroo Island for our first holiday and discovered there was mallee, with higher rainfall and no rabbits and foxes, it was mallee heaven to us. The fact that we could buy beautiful tracts of mallee, to us it’s like a living museum, ecological antiquity, owning pristine mallee, it blew our minds.”