Jo Darvall

For Jo Darvall, art and storytelling are intrinsically linked. A love of story inspires her work and invests it with tension and texture. Whether she’s exploring a true historical narrative or a timeless fable, it’s the modern vibrations that interest her. The links between people and the ways in which we connect are key themes in her visual arts practice. Jo is deft and agile; she adapts her medium and technique – even her exhibition venues – to meet her subject. Her versatility lends enormous scope and variety to her body of work. Delicate, luminous chine-collé prints evoke an ethereal feel, while large scale Eugene von Guérardesque oil paintings are her choice when exploring historical gravity. She’s skilled in myriad techniques – from watercolour, acrylic, pastel and oil to encaustic monoprints, sculpture and installation – and has exhibited in such disparate sites as churches, long corridors, backlit warehouse walls and white-walled galleries. It’s little wonder that she’s been known to incorporate all of the human senses into her exhibitions – even aroma and taste. In her latest collection of monotypes on Arches and Hahnemuhle paper with embossing and chine-collé, Jo Darvall takes her audience on a journey through a mythical dream of past encounters set in a fertile organic playground. In Collection Ten, explore tension and texture as Jo Darvall’s monoprints assemble and reassemble the lotus; the sacred symbol of purity in Buddhism, beauty in Hinduism as well as its association with rebirth in ancient Egypt. And in Collection Twelve, Jo Darvall’s vision of the Blue Mountains is one of steep verticality and the smoky cool palette of ghost gums.