Audrey Harnett is a visual artist based between Kangaroo Island SA and Byron Bay NSW, and holds a Bachelor of Visual Art and Design (2012) in Printmaking from Adelaide College of the Arts. After a thirty year art practice in printmaking, jewellery and installation; acrylic painting is now her preferred medium after further study at Byron Bay School of arts and Byron Bay Community College 2019 to 2022. Passionate about the conservation of unique ecosystems, she dedicates her off-grid home and bush block on Kangaroo Island to ‘land for wildlife’. Over years she has planted and revegetated thousands of She Oak trees which are critical to the plight of endangered Glossy Black Cockatoos. Her painting is born from this love and is underpinned by 25 years of observation and creative response to this land, also informed by earlier studies in botany. Audrey’s process involves immersion in the landscape and long stints of time in solitude, watching the changes in light, moods and seasons. Her work is in the tradition of impressionist landscape painting leaning into magical realism and draws on memory of the island as experienced before the losses seen in the 2019-20 bushfires. Imagination and memory merge with aspects of colour and light, emphasising the feeling of magic and inspired by the possibility of healed country which is also a therapeutic process for her after the trauma of those fires. Audrey wishes to acknowledge and pay respect to the Kaurna people who inhabited Karta Pintingga up until 10,000 years ago when it was separated from the mainland, adding to the mystical energy of this special place.
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