Brushes with the Bush by Jenny Gibson is an exhibition of oils on canvas and charcoal drawings spanning 28 years of art practice and observation.

Join us for the exhibition opening on Friday 2 June at 5.30pm. To be opened by Ruth Waller, artist and former Head of Painting ANU SOAD (2006–2018).

Gibson’s painting embodies a lifetime of bushwalking with family and friends. Whether in the Royal National Park in Sydney, where she spent many days while living in Bundeena, the Snowy Mountains where she skied in winter and walked in summer, or locally, around Canberra, her works express her encounters with the bush. Reflecting a sensorial response to the landscape around her, from more distant views to her immediate surroundings, from small grasses to her experience of moving through trees.

According to the artist, “I would like to introduce into the rectilinear geometry of our human built environment something of the irregular growth patterns of nature. I would like my paintings to remind people that there is another world out there which follows its own laws. This aim is underpinned by the recognition later in my life of the importance of plants in cycles of respiration and renewal and of the miraculous manner in which they make life possible on this planet.”

Exposed to painting as a young girl through Clewin Harcourt, a landscape painter who lived nearby in Heidelberg—Gibson developed her art practice through courses at Gymea TAFE, Sydney and later at the ANU School of Art. Her exhibitions range from group shows in Sydney and Canberra to solo exhibitions at ANCA Gallery and the Belconnen Arts Centre.

Reed Reflections (diptych), 2022, oil on canvas, 102 x 152cm each. Photograph: Andrew Sikorski