The Artist - Janet Vandenberg
The concept developed from my desire to promote Australian cities iconically to tourists through silhouette art. While visiting New York, I was struck by the energy of the Manhattan skyline, and my immediate thought was “I actually see Australia the same way”. With 30 years experience in hospitality, tourism and marketing, my entrepreneurial side saw the skylines delivered worldwide on an affordable artistic tote bag series.
After many months of studying photos and visually rearranging city buildings to fit into my interpretation, I started drawing, without using colour, texture or shading, just varying widths of lines and curves in black pen, resulting in six designs; Brisbane, Gold Coast, Cairns, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
My creative side has found form over the past 5 years, and although I've studied oils, acrylics and water colours, I was always drawn back to the clean simplistic lines of ink brush painting, print making, screen printing and old botanical drawings.
I often obsess over minor details and I think this particular “city series” satisfies my acceptance of the urban form. Inspiration comes from the works of print makers and artists like Warhol, Lichtenstein, Margaret Preston, Margaret Mee, and Henri Matisse. When people see my bags, I'd like their reaction to be “Wow! Australia is fantastic. I was there”!