I have had a lot of fun during my art career so far and have met many wonderful journalists who have kindly shared my story and my work with their readers.

Here are a just a few of my favourites:

this is an interview I did with Jan on ABC Radio:

ABC radio interview – Oct 2011 – Part 1

ABC radio interview – Oct 2011 – Part 2

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From the Age:

Getting insects onside for pest-free garden

by Michael Green

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From Gardening Australia – one of the first times my work was published!

To a full 4 page interview with Wayne Coshall at Better Photography:

This article was in the Financial Review colour magazine with writer and TV personality Caroline Baum. That’s my Mum with me!

This article is from Tasmania and shows the Beetle that Volkswagen sponsored.

this is another oldie, but I love the headline!

I had to include this – I mean how often are you the cover girl, right?
(and no, George Dubbya didn’t go to Bowral!)

And getting into the Qantas magazine was such a big deal at the time ( still is!).

This was a fun Interview with Tam at Willowing:

Featured Artist of the Month

- Jane Davenport -

www.janedavenport.com
November 2010
Hello lovely bunch!

I hope you enjoyed last month’s interview with the lovely Micki! This month you can read all about the amazing Jane Davenport. She is both a prolific photographer and a skillful painter! I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know her a bit since she joined my World of Whimsy II course and I am moved by her caring, giving personality and fun bubbly way of being. I also am absolutely enchanted by her stunning photography and beautiful whimsical art! You can get to know her a bit too by reading this interview! Hope you enjoy it. 1. Who are you and how would you describe your work/ art?

2. I really love both your paintings and your exquisite photography, how long have you been doing each art form for?

I started photography in about 1995. I started as a fashion photographer quite by accident when my mother came to visit me when I was living in London. She bought so many shoes she couldn’t fit her new camera in her suitcase and left it behind for me to return on a visit home. London Fashion Week was about to commence and I really wanted to see if supermodels were as beautiful in the flesh as in the glossies, so I slung the big camera around my neck and snuck in as a photographer and discovered two things 1. They are and 2. I loved photography! I became a fashion catwalk regular and my mum never got her camera back! Now I capture the show-ponies of the garden as they pose in the latest spring fashion and parade down petal catwalks. It’s not really so different from photographing supermodels, they are just as hard to work with – heehee! I have always been ‘arty’. My first job out of school was as a fashion illustrator, and that lead to textile design and then my own fashion label. I was absolutely gung-ho on children’s illustration and in 2000, I had my publisher, all my work bubbling away and then my photographic art just took off and I have been on a wild ride with that ever since! Painting is new. It’s my big passion. I love the way I feel when I am painting.

3. Hang on, just had a peek at your website and you’ve done some gorgeous art journal pages as well! Tell us about those!

Oh thanks! I have always kept a sketchbook close at hand and spasmodically kept ‘morning pages’ after reading The Artists Way. At the beginning of this year I went to an art weekend workshop and my teacher mentioned her ‘Art Journal’ – I asked her to bring it in and was BLOWN away…and signed up for her Art Journal classes. Her journals inspired me so much and I have become quite addicted. Zom’s website is ‘http://pinchmetoseeifyouaredreaming.blogspot.com’.

I can’t quite come to terms with just how nourishing keeping an AJ is… I encourage everyone I meet to take it up! It’s why I really believe in what you are doing with ‘Art Heart & Healing’. The world is a better place with all us AJers in it! I always (ALWAYS) have my AJ with me and I am always being asked to show it. People are curious. I just paper clip pages together if they are really too raw and personal!

4. Focusing on your art (painting/ journaling) for a moment; who or what inspires you to create?

That is hard to answer…I am not sure! One minute I am writing an email, and the next i am preparing my palette and swirling paint onto a canvas! What happens between one thing and the next is a mystery… I also have huge shifts in inspiration levels. For weeks I go into an almost manic state of creativity. I hardly even need sleep. I just pour fourth paintings, drawings, photographs etc etc…and then it stops. I go into a depleted, creatively exhausted state.

But after years of living with my creative tendencies, I just make sure that in non-inspired times I get all prepared for the next creative splurge. I prepare all my canvases ( I like about 1000 layers of smooth gesso!), tidy my studios, check my supplies, organise my life, scan artwork, edit/catalogue photographs and contact all the people I have ignored during my creative whig-out! Art Journalling really gets me through this trough…

5. What, for you, are the parallels between being a painter/ drawer and a photographer?

They both take time to develop (ha ha! old photography joke!). Seriously though,

The parallels in my work are becoming more and more evident to me. This very issue has presented a real conundrum for me to ponder. How to gather together all my creative output? But I can see an intense love of nature and detail. My use of intense colour, dynamic composition and refined backgrounds is always evident no matter what form my creativity strikes!

6. What are your favourite art materials to work with?

I love that you asked me that! I am the art supply queen. Just about any convo on the forum here about art stuff and I will be involved! I am seriously fascinated by art supplies. I always have been from a very young age. The best part is using them up of course, so my collection isn’t ever perfect!

What’s my favorite?

That changes all the time. I get an idea of what I want to do, and then select the materials to do it. Favourites at this moment are Stewart Gill acrylics ( porcelain, afterglow and willow blue )Golden gesso (it is just better than anything else!) and Liquitex long handled brushes. I also have a Prismacolor pencil fetish, a NeoColor II addiction and Sharpie fine pen crush. But I have always been addicted to art supplies and probably always will be, so i am always trying out something new. My local art shop LOVEs it when I walk in the door!

(Take the tour of Jane’s supply-filled amzing art studio!)

7. Out of everything you’ve ever painted, what is your favourite painting/ creation and why?

Hmmm…this changes all the time…but I do love the ‘Sidekick’ series I started during World of Whimsy II. Do you remember my girl and panda? Well I have since drawn a menagerie of “Sidekicks” to go on exhibition in December. It’s all black and white animals and the girls are in primary colours (everything you need to make every other colour). There’s always a concept going on behind my work, but I leave it up to the viewer to dig as deep as they want to.

8.What is your favourite piece of art by another painter/artist?

Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’. I wept when I saw it. I just stood there in the Uffizi and cried. I adore the fantasy of it and that it isn’t perfect, it’s just divine, divine, divine.

9.What is the worst bit of art advice anyone has ever given you?I had an editor of a publishing house say to me “you can’t draw eyes”. I believed her. I reduced my eyes to dots ( Like Bob the Builder!) and without the joy of creating the windows to the soul, I lost interest in drawing for years. I have only reclaimed it this year and I think my eyes are the best bit of all my drawings and paintings!

10.What is the best bit of art advice anyone has ever given

You are not your art.

To not think that way is to freeze up for me. I would be constantly pre-judging my work and worrying if I am revealing too much to my audience. I am painting a relationship with my art. It’s like a dream. my creative output is an exploration, it’s not ‘me’.

11.What is lying on your art desk today?

I just got a rubber stamp maker ( hello?! Exciting or what!?) and some new twinkling H2o’s. I have an art section in my gallery, and one of the big benefits is getting art goodies wholesale. My art journal is buried under there somewhere. my hubby and I had an 8 hour drive home yesterday after a fantabulous family do…and the art journal got a real work out. ( drawing and driving is pretty difficult though.

12.What is the strangest medium/material you’ve ever worked with?

Hmmmm…I ‘ll give anything a go….but the strangest medium would be video! I am very new to it, and really love twisting my brain to it. I have made a few videos of my work, and will definitely be making more. For what purpose is unclear to me now….but that’s the way I start anything, I guess. I just get stuck in, tinker and pfaff about a bit, and then ‘things’ start to happen when I get a bit of momentum. The universe is always conspiring to help everyone along!

13.What hopes and dreams do you have for your art & future?

I love seeing my work being enjoyed and ‘out there’. It’s life journey isn’t quite complete without an audience. So nurturing and growing my audience is important to me. I have done a lot of licensing with my photographic art with stationery ranges, cards, posters, calendars and so on. I would like my other artwork to have that kind of success. I would like finish my first children’s book next year.

I have had many exhibitions of my work and I would like to continue showing in galleries and working as Artist in Residence. I would love to have more ‘Institute of Cute’ shops speckled around the place – like Harajuku in Tokyo…too cool!

14. If you couldn’t be an artist or photographer in this life, what other job or hobby would you really want to give a go?

I am so far down the rabbit hole with what I do that I am basically unemployable…I am just not fit for anything else! Maybe I would work my socks off and be the chief colour inventor at Golden paints or Ranger Ink?…or just start my own paint company…hey! That sounds like a great idea!

15.What are your favourite 5 art related websites or blogs.

Eeeeek! Confession time! I am so busy with workshops,creating art and keeping up with my own blog, that I don’t really have any regular art blog stops…but I have these art websites on speed dial!

YouTube (www.youtube.com)- oh man! it’s the worlds second biggest search engine and the best resource for art videos. I love it! (it’s how I found you Tam!).

Dick Blick (www.dickblick.com)- As a child I would dream of being able to turn invisible and getting locked into a toystore at night and would fantasize about what I would get… Now my fantasy is to be locked inside a the distribution centre for Dickblick.com…yummmmm

Jerry’s Artarama (www.jerrysartarama.com) – see above (this is also an art supply site)!

www.drawingtutorialsonline.com: is extremely good. It’s not easy…but my drawing improved exponentially when using this site.

16. Give a shout out to a fellow artist whose work and/or person & energy you really love!

Sunny Carvalho. She’s a doll and one look at her gorgalicious work and you will know why I mention her!

http://sunnycarvalho.com/Paintings.html

17. If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring artists, what would it be?Just keep going! Keep creating, keep practicing, keep experimenting. Being an Artist is such an amazing, fulfilling career, and it takes unshakeable dedication. Talent gets nowhere without perseverance. ( And learn to read, understandand negotiate a contract!)

Jane’s blog and work can be found on the following links:

http://www.janedavenport.com/blog
http://www.instituteofcute.com.au
http://www.etsy.com/shop/JaneDavenport