Jenny Gibson, Studies on Board (diptych), 2009. Image courtesy of the artist.
Jenny Gibson
Gallery 1
Friday 11 July - Sunday 3 August
Opening Thursday 10 July 2025, 6pm-8pm
Jenny Gibson’s exhibition of oil paintings, charcoal drawings and mixed media studies represents work spanning over 30 years, so it covers several changes of subject matter and execution. All the works are, however, consistent in having the natural world of the Australian bush as their theme.
As her work derives from a lifetime of walking and camping in the wilderness, her paintings rarely portray distant views. Her aim to value the natural world up close for its own sake, is underpinned by her late recognition of its importance in cycles of respiration, and the miraculous manner in which it makes life possible on this planet.
For too long the bush has been seen by our society as a problem to be solved in order to create productive farms, and trees have been regarded as commercial objects to be felled for building materials, paper or firewood. Many people forget, or never learned that without the photosynthesis of those trees they would not have the oxygen they breathe. And city dwellers in apartments may also need to be reminded how important connecting with the natural world can be for their mental health.
‘The artists I most admire’, Gibson says ‘make me see the world with new eyes. In this exhibition I hope to encourage an appreciation of the natural world. I would like my paintings to remind people that there is a beautiful world out there which follows its own laws, independent of human beings, but on whose existence all living things depend.’
About the Artist
At the age of 8 Jenny Gibson spent a year in the Mountain Ash forests of Narbethong, Victoria. This experience gave her a love of the bush which she has never forgotten. She later grew up in Heidelberg, Melbourne, which in the 1940’s had dairy farms on the Yarra River flats. There she was introduced to the visual arts by retired artist, Clewin Harcourt. It was not until she retired and her 3 children left home that she again felt able to pursue her interest in art by enrolling in a drawing course at Gymea TAFE. She was then living at Bundeena in the Royal National Park, so the bush was all around her. It became the inspiration for her early attempts at painting.
When she returned to Canberra after the death of her husband Jenny bought a house near the bushland at the foot of Mount Ainslie, adding a studio in which to paint more seriously. She completed a degree at the ANU School of Art where she experimented with many different media but finds working with oils the most satisfying. When doing studies on paper outdoors, however, she uses charcoal and water based mixed media as they dry quickly.