Studio Visit with Jahne Meyer

Jahne Meyer lives in a tree house in Medlow Bath in the Blue Mountains, which is handy as her main subject matter is the Australian landscape and the amazing creatures that live within it.  Her front porch looks out into the trees, you can hear the chilly, early winter wind whistling through the huge pines out the back.  Jahne's art studio is a sun drenched room at the front of the house.  Beautiful, exotic textiles are layered on the floor, creating a comforting, cosy feeling, essential for the cold Blue Mountains winters.  Vintage enamel artworks inherited from Jahne's arty mother, Margaret, hang on the wall and brightly coloured baskets, housing sculptural native plants, in the window.

Jahne is working on one of the last paintings for her up-coming exhibition at The Corner Store Gallery.  It's a landscape depicting the view from her parents' property with Mount Canobolas in the distance.  There's a noticeable difference in the palette of this work compared to those of the Blue Mountains.  She describes the difference in light, deep, cool blues for the Mountains and warmer oranges and yellows for the Central West.  What a lucky woman she is to have lived in two of the most beautiful and lush parts of New South Wales.

I ask to see the black and white bird drawings I've seen  and they're even better than I imagined.  Drawn with oil pastel pencils, the images have a lovely, rich quality.  The feathers are so beautifully detailed.  I ask if Jahne draws from photographs, she says she studies many images and photographs of the birds form old books and magazines to decide on the best composition.

The other pieces included in the exhibition are realistic landscape oil paintings.  The scenes are quite moody, you can almost feel the cool air and smell the decaying eucalyptus leaves on the ground.  Tiny, brightly coloured pastel drawings of sunsets and cloudy skies add another dimension to the exhibition.  The neon colours seem slightly ludicrous until you realise they are, in fact, the colours we are lucky enough to experience in Australian sunsets.

Home of the Skyfarers is Jahne's first solo exhibition.  If you've ever witnessed an Australian sunset, taken a walk in the the Australian bush or heard the call of a lyrebird, this is the show for you.  Join us for the Opening Night on Friday May 20th from 6-8pm.