What’s your favourite beach on the Northern Beaches?
Paradise Beach for its spectacular sunsets, Bilgola Beach for its ocean pool, perfect for a sunrise swim.
Where’s your favourite place to eat, drink, hang out?
The Newport
Describe one of your fondest memories of life on the beaches?
Christmas during lock down and having the Northern Beaches all to ourselves!
If you had to live anywhere else in the world, where would that second-best place be?
Perhaps in a stupendously luxurious villa on a tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific.
What inspired your cover artwork?
‘Under the Stars’ comes from a recent body of work ‘Dreamscapes’, which collapses the barrier between the dreaming and waking realms, tapping into the world of unconstrained imagination. They have been stitched together from random, unrelated imagery, in a similar way our brain conjures up dreams and creates an alternative reality, which to a conscious, rational mind, wouldn’t make sense. Unusual juxtapositions of objects and images introduce an element of playfulness to the work and charge it with a whimsical narrative.
What inspires you in general?
Colour, texture, pattern, science, environment, climate change, storytelling, night sky, random objects, sleeping dogs, Matisse, Cummings, Klimt, cosmos, flora, fauna to name a few things.
How would you describe your art?
I prefer not to use words to describe my visual practice. Head over to my website and have a look. An artwork is a language already, only visual, no need to dress it in words. If I need to describe a painting and tell you what you should think/feel about it, then I failed as an artist.
What is your favourite part of the artistic process?
The entire lot. Except for the clean-up.
Which artists, or other inspiring people (dead or alive), would you most like to have dinner with and why?
I assume they’re doing the cooking. John Olsen, to see if his paellas really are as good as they say.
How did you discover you had a gift for art?
It’s not a gift you discover, you work for it. I’ve always enjoyed making things. If art is something you enjoy and you’re naturally inclined to pursue, over time you’ll get better at it.
Did you study art?
Yes, at the National Art School in Sydney.
What else are you working on at the moment?
Paintings of interiors of Hill End cottages for an exhibition at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery early next year.
What’s your favourite thing about what you do?
The solitude of my studio.
What would you like to see in the future of the Beaches art scene?
Tate Modern moved from London to Avalon.
What advice do you have for aspiring artists?
Give up now. Just joking. Persist.
Any other words of wisdom for our readers?
Sugar is poison, and more just a reflection that art is more than paint on canvas, and is for everyone, not just a select number of individuals. Being creative and inventive is innate to being human and it manifests itself in all aspects of life, be it cooking dinner or figuring out how to put humans on Mars.
Support (and purchase!) Joanna’s artwork directly from www.joannagambotto.com.au
and on Insta @joannagambotto