Exhibitions
Janette Hanrahan’s versatile artwork is a series of documentation of her travels from her home in the Southern Highlands to the city and to the Northern Territory. Hanrahan’s artwork debates the shift and effects to natural environments in the course of development in our ever-expanding society. Her works illustrate how this once utopic wilderness is slowly diminishing, as developers endeavour for affluence.
There is a clear intimacy with the artist and her subject. There is particular personal reflection to the dying River Red Gums along the Murray River and outback Australia in her exhibited work. The beauty of the natural scenery and view of this changing world is the crux of Hanrahan’s creative release. Hanrahan’s work unquestionably reveals her love, appreciation and respect for her own environment.
The artist’s focus is on Australia’s raw vegetation where she has previously drawn particularly on the eucalypt that is so commonly found in the Southern Highlands region. The eucalypt serves as a metaphor for strength and explores the idea of growth from roots of the past and expanding branches into the riches of the future.
There is a consistent flow of concept, subjective response and stylistic innovation throughout her body of work. Organic, neutral and lineal imagery within Hanrahan’s work record the change of natural inhabitants. The artist experiments with different textures and effects to produce an original surface and piece of artwork. The artist has amalgamated abstract watercolour works on paper on canvas with linocuts, woodcuts and artist books. The individual works vary in scale, and as a complete body, Hanrahan’s work expels an earthy quality, detailed with sharp defined edges and ‘visually strong graphics’.
The artist states; “I have been a practising artist for over 30 years, specialising mainly in the area of printmaking, in particular linocuts & woodcuts…I also love using gouache, watercolour & acrylic in my exhibiting artwork.” Thus, making Hanrahan’s works of art attractive in their aesthetics and captivating in depth of concept.