meet the artist of studio jarrah

about 2 weeks ago i fea­tured an amaz­ing piece in my post by sharon smith of stu­dio jar­rah…i found the piece whilst scour­ing pin­ter­est (i <3 pin­ter­est) and then asked the tal­ented ms smith if she would be gra­cious enough to do an interview.…amongst her crazy sched­ule and down under aus­tralian time dif­fer­ence she kindly accepted…so here is a lit­tle more about the tal­ent, inspi­ra­tion and process of stu­dio jarrah ~

the spec­tac­u­lar mr tentacular

how do you find your inspi­ra­tion?
I have no trou­ble find­ing inspi­ra­tion. We spend a lot of time out­doors and with our two young boys so there is no short­age of inspi­ra­tion in our lives. Nature and its forms are always putting ideas into my head but usu­ally it is a spe­cial per­son or occa­sion that moti­vates me to put those ideas to paper.

what is your process for a new painting?

Often I will have the sub­ject mat­ter in mind, then will search out ref­er­ence pho­tos or visit the zoo or beach to make sketches. Then I refine these into a shape I think will work with the cir­cles and select the palette. I love greens and oranges but am start­ing to work with pur­ples and pinks too as I have so many requests for more ‘girly’ colours!

when did you know you were a cre­ative?
I have always loved draw­ing, paint­ing, cre­at­ing but was never guided in this direc­tion because I was also quite good at maths and eng­lish and sci­ence! Only in my late 20’s have I been con­fi­dent in call­ing myself an artist… a grad­ual pro­gres­sion from Inte­rior Archi­tect to Graphic Designer and now Artist. Although I think we all wear dif­fer­ent hats and one label is never enough. ‘Cre­ative’ is a good one though!

polar bear mumma with cub

if you had to grab 1 thing from your stu­dio what would it be?

Prob­a­bly a photo of my late father with my son as a tod­dler, or a beau­ti­ful fish draw­ing by my tal­ented 5 year old.

if you were a super hero what would you power be?

To turn back time, to get more out of each day and maybe even go back and say that witty remark I can only ever think of 2 hours after the event!

what is your favorite movie?

Per­haps ‘Lucia Y El Sexo’ for the beau­ti­ful scenery and clever story telling, or ‘Som­er­sault’, an Aus­tralian art house flick full of emo­tion and mes­meris­ing scenery. Or maybe even ‘Find­ing Nemo’ which I have watched more times than I’d like to admit…

what is your favorite piece (can you pick just 1)?

side by side we keep growing

The first paint­ing I com­pleted using the painted cir­cles was the two trees which I named ‘side by side we keep grow­ing’ and this is prob­a­bly still the most mean­ing­ful of them all to me.

if you could live any­where where would it be?

I cur­rently live in Perth which has the best weather and lovely beaches but I miss my home­town Ade­laide, which is full of beau­ti­ful, inspired, clever, envi­ron­men­tally con­scious, cre­ative souls that also hap­pen to be my friends! If I could move all those beau­ti­ful peo­ple to the North West Aus­tralian Coast near the Ninga­loo Reef and have world class Rock Climb­ing nearby too we may have found my Utopia.