Ellis Rowan painter, naturalist and explorer, born 1848 was an extraordinary talented woman who for 50 years travelled to remote parts of Australia and New Guinea to paint flowers and wildlife. She painted over 3000 works and is buried at Mount Macedon. My piece is a textile tribute to Ellis Rowan.

Inspired by the vibrant work of Gustav Klimt, my work has the familiar form of the female and their many faces, intense colour and a touch of gold leaf. The faces on the piece are free motion embroidery using many different threads to achieve tone and texture, with a appliqué and embellished background, the pieces is floated above a painted canvas.

The Art Shirt by Jo-Anne Britt focuses on materials, techniques, colours and themes of modernist Australian women artists from the 1920’s through to the 1970’s. As modernism spread throughout the art world during this period, many women artists gravitated to overseas artist enclaves in Europe and America. Art movements such as impressionism, surrealism, dadaism, abstraction, Bauhaus and pop art all influenced artists at this time, and the result was a wide-ranging artistic oeuvre. This Art Shirt features both well-known and lesser-known Australian women artists, reflecting the many interpretations and subjects of the period.

My version of Water lilies, inspired by Monet. This is one of my photos of lilies in Vietnam. I dyed the silk at a workshop with Colleen in July and quilted it then added a thread sculptured flower that I made with Solvy.

Painted with sun dyes on Silk, quilted and touched up with Acrylic and Lumiere paints this piece was inspired by Picasso. Taken from a photo of her in Vietnam, Lynette put the photo into chat GPT to adapt into Picasso style. She then she distorted the AI image on photoshop, printed it on to A1 paper and created her self-portrait on silk.

It started with a workshop drawing of a blue wren in a Picasso inspired Cubist style. I enjoyed breaking the bird into geometric shapes, shifting its forms and exploring different viewpoints. I then translated the drawing onto calico using intense inks and aloe vera. Watching blue wrens hopping around my garden inspired the subject