Meet Jo White – Artist

Artist Jo White, who holds a special place in her heart for Australian pop culture, captures the magic in the day-to-day Down Under from her studio in Armidale, NSW.

 

It was almost impossible to get it perfectly flat, the green felt pitch from the iconic 90s game, Test Match. But I liked being the bowler, placing the silver ball in his moulded cup hand gave me god-like vibes. Tori Amos’ Cornflake Girl played on repeat, much to my brother’s annoyance, while our greasy, Smith’s-crinkle-cut-chips-stained mitts maneuvered the men.

I can see it, smell it and hear it. But most importantly, I can feel every little bit of that summer in Caloundra when I look at Jo White’s painting, Test Match – employee that’s supposed to go five days but rarely does, 2024. Like so much of her work, the piece oozes Australian nostalgia to the point where I almost physically ache. I actually challenge anyone who grew up in 80s/90s Oz to not feel some kind of yearning during a deep dive into Jo’s work. Like her Bubble O’Bill – cue filling up at a servo during a long, hot road trip. His mega bubblegum nose claims my eight-year-old loose tooth and stains his creamy face cherry red. Or her Grandma’s Grazing Board which, funnily enough, triggers adored memories of nibbles at my Grandma’s house. It’s true, “nibbles ain’t nibbles without cubed cheese, cabanossi, Jatz and coloured onions”. Just add bottled gherkins and a glass of Coolabah’s finest casked Chardonnay and my Grandma is officially in the room. Fast forward to some of Jo’s more recent work, like her homage to Newcastle showcasing Silverchair’s iconic Frogstomp, Hunter Street, the Knights and Oak Milk. I’m immediately transported to my uni days spent in the steel city – I can practically feel the hangover.

My point being, Jo White has a remarkable way of telling stories with paint and, more recently, by combining paint and sculpture – a format Jo created when she had so much to say it simply couldn’t fit on one flat canvas.

“The Newcastle piece was the first – that was for a Michael Reid show that took place in Newcastle. But my mind works in collections, so I couldn’t help but wonder: how do I get everything I want to say about a place into just one painting?

“So I made a collection of individual paintings, cut them out and layered them into one piece. Some of it’s directly onto the canvas, some is canvas on board, some might be ply and some might be balsa wood. It really depends on what I need for each one to create these paintings with sculptural elements.”

The result is a 3D artwork that beckons you to explore – best done when you channel your inner child, look on with fresh eyes and put the clues together to uncover connections between items.

“For example, my piece on Winton, Queensland includes a lot of books about Banjo Paterson, big blue skies and rust-red dirt, a fossil, roaming cattle and even Bluey,” adds Jo. “But it’s the green budgerigars that make it for me. Apparently they’re everywhere out there – if you stand still long enough they’ll land on you.”

I’ve never been to Winton, but I can already see the budgies bouncing around town thanks to the chipper characters captured by Jo’s highly saturated hues – another telltale sign of her work which grew even brighter the moment she moved to Armidale. But first, Jo’s own story starts in Coonamble.

Drawing in the dirt

“I come from a long line of farmers – sheep and wheat, mainly – and knew pretty early on that school was not my vibe. But the dirt out there became my canvas, and a stick my brush. I’d draw pictures while waiting for the school bus. Even today, I still really love drawing.”

It’s in her blood actually, with her Nana always busy creating ceramics and sculptures, her uncle and great uncle both painters and her cousin a steel sculpturist… when he’s not busy with his day job as a farmer, that is. So it will come as no surprise that schoolyard Jo focused on the visual, over the written component, of any assignment thrown her way.

“Let’s just say I’d spend three days working on the pictures and experimenting with different fonts for the title page heading, then one day to do the project itself,” she says. “By the time I got to senior school in Tamworth, very little had changed and for my last two years, art was pretty much all I did.”

She goes on to describe her major work, a chess board of 100 footballers made with paper mache. Her material? The pages of Rugby League Week – “not every page is colour, you know, so I needed hundreds of them to cut out enough to make a player from each team.” I hear you Jo, who after that massive project and some advice to ‘go do some life’ from her art teacher, decided to move home – which was now Moree.

Jo relished her time on the land for the next few years, working at the newsagent while helping out on the family farm. Some nights she did art classes at TAFE, a way to ensure she continued learning different styles and techniques. When her folks eventually left town, she stayed on before taking the opportunity to move somewhere new.

“I chose Armidale, moved here in September 2019, bought a house with an entire wall of north-facing windows and have loved it every day since.”

And, every day since, it’s in that north-facing space that Jo paints her lived experience, her beloved dog Duckie by her side. She can’t stand silence, so you’ll hear a podcast, playlist or tv show on in the background, while the windows provide her with a round-the-clock view of the clouds.

“I find myself constantly distracted by them, actually; they roll by so quickly up here. Then there’s the light. It seems so much brighter, harsher even, making it impossible not to see the distinct shadows cast across buildings, cars, footpaths, everywhere I look. I think you can see a real change in my palette when I moved to Armidale as a result. The colours became far more saturated, the shadows even stronger – none of it was intentional, it just came out that way.”

On that note, Jo’s artworks really do ‘just come out that way’. While she kept a visual arts process diary at school, the one she keeps at home these days is barely touched and she sees little need in spending time sketching, planning, even modelling works like some other artists.

“I just pick up a brush and paint… I don’t know if that’s the norm,” she says.

“I think there’s definite value in planning your work if that’s part of your process, but I pretty much know what each piece is going to look like before I start. I visualise a lot of things and the most random of moments can trigger an idea. That’s my normal, so any prep time beyond painting is a waste of time for me.”

Murrurundi mates

Clearly not one to beat about the bush, Jo has jumped both feet into her Australian nostalgia theme and is never short of inspiration. A compulsive note taker (“Seriously, there might be about 700 of them on my phone”), the most random of moments can trigger an idea for her next collection. From a Holden HK parked across the road to a caravan she passes on her way home, from a Peters Hava Heart ice cream to a tin of Cadbury Roses – there’s a comforting, shared connection in the day-to-day Down Under.

“We didn’t have a Holden HK, but my Dad was a bit of a tappet head – a big car enthusiast. As for the caravan, that was a sleepover treat for us when visiting friends, and Dad’s ice cream of choice was always the Heart. We were never allowed that as a kid, that’s a grown-up ice cream and there’s no way we’d spend money on that for a kid – you’re having a Frosty Fruit or a Paddle Pop mate.”

I can speak for the Cadbury Roses – there was a tin on my Grandma’s kitchen table every Christmas, right next to the Quality Streets and yes, debates ensued. But here’s my point, we’ve all had that conversation, experienced that moment, shared those chocolates at some stage in our Aussie lives, and Jo’s work celebrates that for the glorious thing that it is. It’s no surprise that many of her pieces fly across oceans to adorn the walls of expats the world over, and it’s also no surprise that she has a rock-solid relationship with renowned gallery Michael Reid Murrurundi.

“I just decided one day, what’s the worst that could happen if I shared what I do with other people? It could be that nothing changes and everything stays the same, or, something could change – and that would be better,” says Jo. “So I started putting my work out on social media and one Sunday afternoon I got a call from the Michael Reid Galleries, asking me if I’d come in for a visit.”

She went. She showed them her work. She hasn’t looked back since. Today, her partnership with Michael Reid, Daniel Soma and the wider gallery team is one she’s forever grateful for, describing them as supportive, nurturing geniuses who also aren’t afraid to say the word ‘no’.

“That is important for me, because I can have so many ideas on any given day, I need that sounding board to share my thoughts and help direct my work – like how the Newcastle painting triggered the entire collection for Kath & Kim, called Little Baby Cheeses. I thought that was either going to be the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done, or equally, the shittest thing in history – luckily it’s turned out pretty well.”

In my mind, luck has nothing to do with it. Jo’s natural artistic talent combined with her uncanny ability to know what’s going to strike a chord deep down in our Australian souls is special… nice… different…unusual. (See the breakout column if you need a nudge for that reference.) But ultimately, it’s comforting, like a game of Test Match with a bag of Smith’s chips.

“Maybe it’s people latching on to that feeling of when life wasn’t all about bills to pay and working long hours; instead holding onto those sweet memories.”