INSPIRE: Mt Barker artist Bronte Wilkes joins grandmother Elizabeth Jenkins with nature-inspired exhibit

Three generations of a Great Southern family showcased their artwork and love for nature at this year’s Southern Art and Craft Trail, marking their sixth exhibition for the event. Bronte Wilkes first joined forces with her grandmother Elizabeth Jenkins and mother Rowena Wilkes for the art trail in 2019 to create a nature-themed exhibit, combining Wilkes’ paintings of plants and flowers and Jenkins’ three-dimensional textile sculptures of fungi. This year’s line-up is slightly altered with Bronte’s 18-month-old daughter Olivia Hannig replacing Rowena to showcase her colourful finger painting. Bronte, who works out of her home studio in Mt Barker said she has always been inspired by the natural world, gravitating towards bright Australian native florals in her painting. “My style does keep changing every year, but when I look back to how I started in 2019, I can see sort of traces of what I do now,” she said. “I’m finding that I still love painting the native branches, the leaves and gums and also using really bright colours. “When Olivia was born, we would do a bush walk every day with the dog and her in the carrier and I’d show her all the beautiful nature around here. “My parents have a farm in Narrikup and I’ve always thought the shapes and the colours of the trees and plants are just so cool to paint.” Jenkins, who had always been a dressmaker and patch worker, only got into the more structural art pieces about seven years ago. The fungi-inspired pieces involve cutting strips of fabric, individually dying them and stitching them around a wire that she moulds into intricate shapes of wood, mushrooms and fungal growths. Jenkins also crafts individual fallen leaves out of used teabags, cutting the delicate paper and sewing lines to create veins. “I have always loved to stitch and have now turned that love to 3D form,” she said. “(I’m) combining my fascination with fungi using the sewing machine.” Though the collaboration was officially cemented in 2019 with the pair’s first art trail showing, Bronte said her grandmother has been creating art with her since she was a child. ”When I was a kid, we used to go to grandma’s, out on their farm, and she taught me to sew stuff,” she said. “We’d make little dolls and quilts and clothes — whatever we felt like really. “Then we’ve started this thing where we would do a day every month and we’d all catch up at her house and all just work on our own little projects — I’ll be painting, she would be sewing, and then my mum would be doing her bookbinding. “I’ve always been a creative person, I think it’s just part of my personality — but it was definitely encouraged when I was a kid.” As well as creating her own art, Bronte leads private paint and sip workshops through her business the Little Art Space. She hopes one day to make a full-time income from her art and open her own art studio. “The dream would be a space in Albany, like a shop like down York Street where I can host private paint and sips, or you could come in and do a three-hour workshop on different styles of work. “We could do nude modelling sketch classes or kids birthday parties. “It’s a hard juggle between being a mum, working part-time, doing my art and running a business though so I’d have to be careful of burnout. “To be able to only work on my art and help others with theirs, that would be my absolute dream.” Bronte Wilkes’ art can be seen on her Instagram @brontewilkes_art. The 2024 Southern Art and Craft Trail ran from September 21 to October 6.

INSPIRE: Mt Barker artist Bronte Wilkes joins grandmother Elizabeth Jenkins with nature-inspired exhibit

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