The Back story

Originally from Norway, Janicke lives in Geelong with her partner and rescue dog Tessa. She grew up in Adelaide studying Visual Arts, Interior Decoration, Desktop Publishing and Primary Teaching. In 2004 she moved to Melbourne and began her teaching career. It wasnt until 2020 that she moved to Geelong.

Janicke has been creating art for most of her life but it has only been in the last 10 or so years that her focus has moved from teaching to her arts practise. Through her work, she seeks to transmit the childlike sense of wonder and happieness that she still experiences when observing animals, nature, and design. ​

The Artist

Janicke’s artworks are created from her own photography, as well as time spent observing and interacting with the natural and man-made world. Her practice centres on playful experimentation with stencils, printmaking, dripping paint, multiple layers, and sculptural forms. Details come from fine-tuning and blocking out areas in solid colours of acrylic paint. Throughout this process a happy, colourful menagerie emerges, creating art in the form of paintings, collages, clutches, and lampshades. Her sculptures follow a similar process but with a focus on recycling, using clean waste as the core of the work and a layering of papier mache and plaster on the outside to create a stone-like appearance.

 The Environment

Janicke is passionate about art and the environment and her ambition is to continue to limit further environmental impact and to pass on this message to current and future artists. She reuses, reduces and recycles when creating her art and in my day to day life. 
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Some examples are:

• Turning old clothing into cleaning cloths, part of her sculptures or giving them to Op Shops
• Collecting packaging and other non recyclable items and creating sculptures out of it
• Minimising water use by using rain water, using it twice (not clean water each time she washes her paint brushes) 
• Painting outside so to use natural light​​