Exhibitions
Best of Botanicals
My botanicals have been published in Art Edit Magazine (No36, pages 36 and 37).
“Art Edit presents works that peer into the intricate, mysterious world of botanicals.”- Justine Scott writes.
BLUE Exhibition
Tresillian Arts Centre
Colours carry significant meaning and can affect us emotionally and physically. Research proves the colour blue can reduce blood pressure, heartbeat and respiration as well as create a calming atmosphere.
It is no wonder then, that Rogers has chosen to explore the possibilities of colour blue.
By stripping away the technicolour realism of her subjects and depicting them in blue, we can associate them with things that we can't really touch, like the sunlight. Rogers describes her paintings as ‘sun paintings,’ carrying the feelings of heat and intensity of light of a familiar bush walk at midday.
Midday Sun (Blue 1), Mixed media on board, 80x100cm, 2022
Midday Sun (Blue 2), Mixed media on board, 80x100cm, 2022
As verses of a poem a series of paintings are describing Rogers’ reverence of nature and the moving time. She is lionizing Western Australian plants in arrangements of Baroque and Rococo paintings of floral abundance. The background patterns are created by floating ink (suminagashi). Traditionally suminagashi printed paper was used to write poetry in Japan and it is well suited for the rich poetic nature of it’s subjects: banksias eucalypts, hakeas and all the exotic bunch
Verse 7, watercolour and ink on paper, 40x50cm, 2022
Verse 8, watercolour and ink on paper, 40x50cm, 2022
Verse 2, watercolour and ink on paper, 50x70cm, 2022
City of Melville Artist in Residence 6-30 September 2022
When I started my artist residency in Wireless Hill Reserve I dived into the miniature world of orchids and other wild flowers that I didn't dare to approach before.
Walking in spring time the floor of the bush is covered by a large variety of small flowers. I had to train my eyes to spot the differences. I walked the tracks in both directions at different times of the day to catch individual plants in different lighting or just try to find them again in the changing environment. It was a dizzying task.
Donated work to City of Melville Art Collection
Donkey orchid, watercolour and ink on board, 34x44cm, 2022
Royal Perth Art Prize
I came to Australia from an unfamiliar European background against which everything in the landscape still seems fresh, new and exciting and so different from the land I grew up. Therefore I approach my adopted country with the spirit of passionate wonder.
This artwork is a manifestation of my experience walking trails, immersed in strong light in bushland, getting closeup and truly involved. For me the plants are important to distinguish and to identify the land I am experiencing.
Proximity, mixed media on board (acrylics, dry pigments, and Polyurethane finish on Marine AA grade Hardwood Plyboard), 80x120cm, 2022.
City of Melville Art Commission
This artwork is a manifestation of my experience walking the Wireless Hill reserve trails, immersed in strong light in bushland overlooking the river. The title is the actual coordinates of the plant I painted. For me the place is more important to distinguish than to identify the plant itself this time, although the firework-like nature and colours of the flowers made it the right plant to communicate my awe for the place.
Click on the link to see installed work -
https://www.instagram.com/p/CXgQ7_rDXYG/?igshid=NDdhMjNiZDg=
Latitude 032°01’50” South. Longitude 115°49’41” East
Mixed media on board (acrylics, dry pigments, and Polyurethane finish on Marine AA grade Hardwood Plyboard), 4 panel installation, 39x39x0.12cm each, 2021.
York Botanical Art Prize 2021
This ‘Sun Painting’ depicts a hybrid kangaroo paw painted in negative imitating cyanotype prints. By using digital photography, the blue colours inverted. The two digital prints are sandwiched together, and the negative blue is visible through the cuts of the inverted yellow image on the top. Hybridisation is not only integral to the creative process; it is also the literal subject matter. The traditional fine art of tonal painting and the crafts of paper cutting have merged to form a hybrid work with contemporary digital technologies. Hybrid art depicting a hybrid plant, with science and technology, is available to create both.
Hybrid Kangaroo paw (Anigozanthos flavidus green form)
Museum quality digital prints on paper, paper cutting and folding, 88x72x4cm, 2021
Hybrid Kangaroo paw (blue print)
Museum quality digital prints on paper, edition of 5, 68x84cm, 2021
Hybrid Kangaroo paw (yellow print)
Museum quality digital prints on paper, edition of 5, 68x84cm, 2021
Hybrid
Linton and Kay Galleries Mandoon Estate
An art exhibition of bee bums and botanical bestiary, bounty and fragility.
The works in this exhibition praise the enchanted cacophony available to us when we take the time to truly interact with nature and remind us at the same time of its bounty and unnerving fragility.
These works, depicting familiar plants and insects, are alive with colour explosions and vibration.
Rogers has invented hybrid plants that display new features and different characteristics from their parents, becoming something altogether new.
In a series of her botanical bestiary, she has built insects from the same plants that uses them as pollinators to show that they are dependent on each others’ well-being.
The works are meant to amuse, but they also symbolize the abundance of creation. Similarly in 1590, Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted his royal patron, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, as a heap of fruits and vegetables, with pea pod eyelids and a gourd for a forehead.
Attraction series
Close ups of pollination. To attract the right pollinator flowering plants go to a great effort to develop right size, shape, colour and sent.
Botanical bestiary
In a series of her botanical bestiary, she has built insects from the same plants that uses them as pollinators to show that they are dependent on each others’ well-being.
Creating the local insects with plants can be found in gardens, parks, verges and forests of the area. I was using invasive watsonia bulb found discarded by rangers in a clearing to make poisonous redback spider.
Building a hybrid
Playing with nature. Rogers offers a playful multi-segmented artwork of two familiar plants to create a new one. She is building a three-dimensional hybrid from two-dimensional mixed media paintings. The work was inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’ House of Cards (1950) design.
Attraction 1. Watercolour on paper, 81x81cm, 2021.
Attraction 3. Watercolour on paper, 81x81cm, 2021.
Botanical Bestiary 1. Watercolour on paper, 68x88cm, 2021.
Botanical Bestiary 5. Watercolour on paper, 49x68cm, 2021.
"She approaches Australian flora and fauna, therefore, not with the necessary detachment of the scientist, but in an older scientific spirit of passionate wonder bordering on hallucination."
-Quote from exhibition essay by Emeritus Professor Richard Read, link to full essay.
For the Asking
Solo Exhibition, Tresillian Arts Centre Nedlands
“The current time makes for pause, reflection and quiet centring. By increasing awareness, one builds a feeling of wonder and kinship with the overlooked. The act of painting becomes like a prayer — free for the asking — that praises the world of small as-is."
Olive oil, garlic & marjoram. Mixed media on board, 39x39cm, 2020
Onion, celery, carrots, white wine, peppercorn & bay leaf. Mixed media on board, 45x45cm, 2020
Garlic, chilli & butter. Mixed media on board, 50x60cm, 2020
Body Mess #5. Acrylics on board, 20x20cm, 2019
Body Mess #6. Acrylics on board, 20x20cm, 2019
York Botanical Art Prize 2020
Finalist, Gallery152 York
I have been studying and painting the local flora of the Banksia Woodland of the Swan Coastal Plain in the last 5 years and have had 4 solo exhibitions on the subject.
Illyarrie is such a showy plant when in flower. I did not dare to paint it for years because of the difficulty in conveying its very vibrant colours. This year we had them blooming with such ferocity in my neighbourhood, I just had to summon the courage to paint them.
This painting is part of the series Art Forms in Nature, I have been working on since 2019. It is referencing ‘Art Forms in Nature: The Prints of Ernst Haeckel’ (originally published in 1899). Scientific illustration in general and Ernest Haeckel (1834-1919) publications particularly had a significant effect on me from early childhood.
Eucalyptus erythrocorys. Watercolours and inks on paper, 56x76cm, 2020
Lester Prize 2020
Semi-finalist, Perth
I had wanted to paint Eva for years. I thought her resistance to the idea comes from being guarded of her own image. She is an artist and her images of herself are not self-portraits, although she models in much of her conceptual art. I wanted to show her inner depths and character by asking for a portrait again and again. The icebreaker was our mutual love of dogs. When she adopted a French Bulldog, she finally agreed to a portrait of the puppy and to my surprise Eva didn’t mind being included in the painting. The sitting was as joyful as it gets.
Poppy and Eva. Watercolours on paper, 560x760mm, 2020
RAAFA Bull Creek
Artwork commission and purchase
My 6 limited edition botanical prints and a botanical tryptic became part of the new aged care facilities art collection.
Out of the suitcase. Mixed media on board, 70x60cm, 2015
Quick Quick Slow
Solo Exhibition, Tresillian Arts Centre Nedlands, 2019
Looking at slow art in the age of speed.
Quick Quick Slow is the rhythm of many dances from Latin to Hungarian folk. The speed can differ, but the rhythm is the same (Salsa is quicker than Rumba, the slowest of all the Latin dances). We can have no meaningful experience of slowness, cannot grasp it, without a sense of how fast feels. In dance the two quick moves lead you to a slow pace when you have time to turn or to do something great, exhilarating, to change directions or partners.
I do a lot of things in quick tempo to allow me to have a slow cadence to make art.
My work is created very slowly and deliberately. For me the act of creating art is both meditation and devotion.
Art Forms in Nature 27. Limited edition print (1 of 5) of original watercolour, 68x94cm, 2020
Art Forms in Nature 31. Limited edition print (1 of 5) of original watercolour, 68x94cm, 2020
Art Forms in Nature 35. Limited edition print (1 of 5) of original watercolour, 68x94cm, 2020
Daniel. Mixed media on board, 90x50cm, 2011
3.02kg. Mixed media on board, triptych, 120x120cm, 2018
Koi. Maxed media on board, 60x120cm, 2017
Garlic, chilli & butter. Mixed media on board, 50x60cm, 2020
Body Mess #6. Acrylics on board, 20x20cm, 2019
Asleep. Mixed media on board, 120x225cm, 2013
It is what it is. Watercolour on paper, installation, 122x116cm, 2019
Romancing Botany
Solo Exhibition, Linton and Kay Galleries Mandoon, 2019
Geoff Vivian wrote about the show:
Artist Judy Rogers has a knack for making us look, and look again.
Rogers has now taken to botanica, but she has not become a scientific illustrator.
'I don’t want to bring cuttings into the studio and rearrange them to mimic life,' she says. 'The outcome looks like an open-casket funeral to me.' Instead, Rogers uses her well-honed techniques to create “portraits” of plants, just as one makes a portrait of a human being. Each portrait has an added poignancy because it is a painting of a familiar plant, just as she paints her family members. As an added twist she has taken to depicting our bushfire-resilient native flora with charcoal.
After the fire. Mixed media on board, 50cm in diameter, 2018.
Awe. Mixed media on board, 12 panels, 121x162cm, 2018.
Mottlecah Pods 2. Mixed media on board, 39x39cm, 2017
Mottlecah Flowers 2. Mixed media on board, 39x39cm, 2018
Art Forms in Nature 3. Watercolour on paper, 50x70cm, 2019
