Sydney artist Jennifer Keeler-Milne talks about spring 2020 after the Covid lockdowns. “After getting through winter, I felt this urge to create something around wattle. It’s uplifting, glorious and native. Yellow, the predominant colour of wattle, has been a joy to use. It suggests the sheer pleasure of coming out of a tough winter, expressing a sense of luminosity and celebration. The wattle, our national floral emblem, matched our communal springtime emotion of healing.” Her large work in charcoal on yellow paper Wattle2020 was entered in the 2021 Dobell Prize. She followed this with another large work Spring Wattle III in oils for the Wynne Prize. This is being exhibited at the SH Ervin gallery in Sydney from 5 June.
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
