Top Six Images Clockwise from Left Corner:
Awakening, 2013 Acrylic on canvas
30cm x 20cm, Private Collection;
Tree (Detail), 2010 Acrylic on canvas 36cm x 26cm,
Winner (acquisitive) - Darebin Art Show 2010,
City of Darebin Collection (Melbourne);
Detail of Painting; Detail of Sketchbook;
Afternoon Light (Painting on wall), 2015
Acrylic on canvas 15cm x 15cm;
On Saunders Street, 2014 Acrylic on canvas
30.5cm x 20.5cm, Private Collection
Bottom Images:
Landscape Paintings: I, II, III;
The Artist, Jodi Wiley;
Tree, 2010 Acrylic on canvas, 45.5cm x 35.5cm,
Winner - 'Best other medium' Melton Art Show 2010,
Private Collection
Photography by Maria Colaidis
I see trees as beautiful and stoic, vulnerable yet hardy and ultimately shaped by their environment. The trees I use as reference can be found in suburban and urban environments, growing on nature strips, in public parks or by the sides of roads.
Trees are often taken for granted in their urban landscape. As a result I use a solid white background to highlight their singularity and focus intensely on unique detail.
I am interested in trees as ritual symbols for memory and the way they are used to make meaning at different milestones: a tree planted in memorial of a life, as a celebration of a birth, or to commemorate a particular event. I am also intrigued by how children transform trees through play; often a single tree remains a vivid childhood memory in the adult imagination.
I am drawn to particular trees because of their ‘body’ and ‘character’. I see other human qualities in them too: beauty, frailty, strength and resilience. The life they have lived is written on their surface; in the angle and appearance of their trunk, the tangle of their limbs and the complicated intricacy of their bark.
I aim to capture the ethereal, visceral nature of trees; their mystery but also the solid, grounded reality of their existence.
Melbourne, Australia
jodiwiley.com
http://jodiwileystudio.blogspot.com.au