Ep19 - Art, Architecture, Interiors & Style with Port Douglas local Janet Morris

In this episode, we sit down with the effortlessly stylish Janet Morris—interior designer, creative, and accomplished oil painter, for a conversation about building a life centred around creativity.

Fresh home from London, Janet shares the exciting experience of being part of a very special collaboration with Eco By Sonya, where her artwork was exclusively featured at the brand's London store opening. We chat about the journey that led to this incredible opportunity and what it was like seeing her work showcased on an international stage.

From designing beautiful interiors to creating expressive oil paintings, Janet discusses how her love of colour, texture and storytelling weaves through everything she creates. We also explore the evolution of her creative career, where she finds inspiration, the role travel plays in her work and how she has developed such a distinctive and timeless style.

@janetmorrisart 

Eco By Sonya - Notting Hill Pop Up Store

Transcript

0:00

All the juice straight from the makeup booth. Welcome to the booth juice. Welcome back to another episode of The Booth Juice. Today I am joined by a true Port Douglas local, a creative genius, and one of the sweetest people I've ever met. Please welcome Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's a real honour. I am so excited to hear more about your life as a multi-passionate artist. Now I say multi-passionate because I know that your career has really spanned many genres. Could you tell me a bit more about you and your artistic life? Oh my artistic life, I guess, has just it's come, it's stemmed from being a an observer and a creative, and that started as a very early, at a very early age. So my my creative journeys spanned from being an interior decorator to an interior designer to being working in conjunction with architects and also art. So and I've also been always interested in fashion. So I think the four those four things, art, architecture, interior design, and um fashion are all aligned because you've got an appreciation of you know the the way you know the light falls on something or the way a fabric falls or um the way a texture works with um another texture. So I've just always been an observer and it's always resonated with me that I just appreciate beauty. I really appreciate beauty, whether it's in nature or um the built environment or decorative items or art, which is where I fortunately ended up. Oh, that's so beautiful. And you grew up here in Port Douglas? I grew up here from the age of 13. I um I was fortunate enough to live in a beautiful part of Sydney, um, Pittwater. And so my my youth or my childhood was all beaches, boats, fishing, um bushwalks. So I've always been exposed to um the natural world, and it was sailing that brought my family here in 1974. Oh, they just gave me good spot. That's so sweet. So my my my my dad, mum, and sister and I, we sailed here in 1974. And um, yeah, I've lived here pretty much ever since. I've had time away living in both Melbourne, Sydney and the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, but here is home. Yeah, absolutely. And your your family, particularly your dad, has had a lot to do with development in Port Douglas. Correct, yes. So um going back to as early as 1973, um we purchased the the land out on um the Captain Cook Highway and Port Douglas Road, which is now IGA and the and the wildlife habitat. That was a cane farm, and we operated that as a cane farm for many years. Wow. And uh yeah, so that was Dad could see that that was an amazing location. It had the lovely little inlet coming through there, and yeah, so oh that's fantastic because it I feel like it hasn't been that long since that time, and it feels like it is completely different to a cane farm now. Oh, absolutely. Well, when you went up the years, it it actually is. Yeah, it's 50 years ago, it's over 50 years ago since I came here. So I've seen a lot, and our family's also done um or created the the wildlife habitat, which it was the rainforest habitat. Yeah, um, what is now Ramada, which was treetops. Um what was the um I think it's the no, it's it mantra? No, the the big one that was um I keep it everything's called. Um I think so lots of things. And most recently, Escape Villas. Oh yes. So yeah, that's what we if anyone has opened a Port Douglas magazine, you probably will have seen some beautiful photos. Exactly, yeah. We we um we're a big supporter of the magazine as a way to promote um our amazing villas. Yeah, and we have them for sale for uh rental and for holiday rental and for sale. Yeah, cool. Oh that's good to know. Yes, yes, fantastic. Yeah, so architecture obviously plays such a big part. Huge. Yeah, huge. So did you did you say you started with architecture or did you start with artwork? I started with interior decoration. Oh yes, okay. Um and I've got a funny story about that because um I realised at at a really young age that it was what I was interested in because like I was at boarding school in Townsville, and all the other girls would get their dolly magazines and they'd have to hide them because you know they had or Cosmopolitan or Clio, they'd have to hide them. But me, no. All I bought for my birthday was a subscription to Architectural Digest. Unreal at the age of 15. I love it. You and my mum get along so well. I was looking at amazing fabrics and French interiors and American interiors and everything, and all the other girls are. And I'm more interested in you know who's who's the latest um hot boy. Absolutely. Oh, that's so cool. Oh wow, that's awesome. So Townsville, yeah. Yes, I went to boarding school in Townsville for two years. I had one year at Mossman High, yeah. Um, year 10 and then year 11 and 12 in in Townsville. Fantastic. So then did you go on to study? I went on to um uni with my then husband, my late husband, um Chris. We both um were passionate about staying together. Yeah. Um so he gave up going to Monash, I think, and chose to come to Townsville to be with me. That's beautiful. He he stood the course and I dropped out after a year um because I wanted to do be an interior decorator, didn't I? Amazing. And coincidentally, my family got involved in a wallpaper manufacturing company and we ended up having a retail outlet in Townsville. Wow, that's so interesting. We ended up uh working in the wallpaper and ended up being a fabric store as well, and we ended up doing all sorts of interior. Wow. So that probably would have just opened the doors to the entire art world, yeah. That's right, that's right. So then I have only really known you well since I've had makeup, which has been about six years. Yes, and just what a sidebar. Thank you, because you've been such a beautiful supporter of my store and me as a young person in the community, so thank you. Well, I think what you're doing for this town and for all um local um suppliers and makers and creators is just such a beautiful thing to do for our community, and it rounds out our local um retail because we don't want to just be seen, I think, as being, you know, as a a town by the sea that has surf clothes and um you know fancy restaurants and everything. We do have a creative element in our community, absolutely, and you you're you're giving um the town that opportunity to display that. Thank you. That is so nice of you. Oh, that's that's really sweet. Um but where I was sort of going with that is that I've sort of only known you as an oil painter. Correct. So, have how long have you been oil painting for? Okay, um I'll go back to the beginning of where I was actually started in acrylics, yeah, which was just after I sold my interior design practice, um, Island Point Interiors, and I finally had the time, so I actually spent some time with um another local artist, Chrissy McLaughlin, and she gave me some wonderful tuition on acrylic painting and watercolour painting. So I did that for probably the f next two years. Yeah. And what year was this, sorry? Um we're talking 2018. Oh yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, cool. So just before I met you. Yeah, cool. And then um I just I was like a sponge learning about all the different mediums that you could be using. Um, but I was too I was always a little bit afraid of oil, so just thought, oh, this is all too darn scary. It's it's I think um a lot of people think that oils are hard up here because it's so humid. Does it take a long time to dry? If I didn't have an air conditioned studio in the summertime, yeah, I it would it would stop me. But my the air conditioning definitely helps. Oh that's good, yeah. Um having said that, when I do have a if I've got a deadline and I don't have the time for those all of those layers and you know, because you you're constantly putting um background and layers and um texture and everything on top of it. If you don't have the time for that to dry, I do go back to acrylic. Oh right. So I did an exhibition in Brisbane last year in uh June, and I was only given five weeks' notice to create quite a lot of a big um body of work. So I actually went back to acrylic. Fantastic. And actually had a lot of fun with it. So I think it's important as an artist not to get too stuck in whatever medium you're working with. I mean, I'd I'd love to explore a little bit more with um collage and putting um, you know, that lovely rich texture that you can create with with collage. Um but yeah, I'm not I'm not at all, I do not sort of think um, oh, it's lesser because you're using acrylic. Oh yes. Um I just like oil because it you've got a lot of um liberty once it gets on the canvas to move it around. Ah, cool. So you've never, I mean, I'm not an artist at all, full stop, but um I've never really got to work with oils much. So it's always fascinating me to process. Yeah. And obviously the th the thicker the oil is, as in the less um turps you use with that um with your oil, the longer it's going to take to dry. Yeah. So to get the lovely rich um brush strokes where you can see every individual um brush stroke that can sometimes take a long time to dry. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. And now a lot of your artwork is I feel very inspired by the ocean and the Great Barrier Reef, would you say? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Um the ocean, snorkeling, my family have always had boats, always, since I was a baby. So obviously living up here, it's obvious we go out to the reef. Yeah. Um my sister's a marine biologist, um and she started reef biosearch with uh with um Quicksilver. So we've always had a lot to do with the ocean and snorkeling. So I guess my yeah, my my underwater reef paintings are they're not only inspired by um uh recent trips, but it's just memory. Memory. Um they become totally imprinted in your mind, those images that you know you go down and you take a photograph with your brain and um and that's a beautiful part of your process too, I suppose, like having that mindfulness slowing down, really appreciating what you've grown up with, and the same can apply to whether you're not snorkeling, but you you might be walking on the beach um at dawn, or you might be walking through the rainforest and um listening to the birds, or seeing you know, a beautiful leaf that's just got an amazing vein through it, or a butterfly. I don't know, it's just about observing and keeping those um images in your mind that you can go back to the studio studio and recreate that feeling. Yeah, I do feel like all of your pieces encapsulate that for sure. Like whether it be yeah, still fruit or yeah, or a flower in a vase or anything, you do yeah, really capture that. And light is the other thing that I is one of my big um I'm passionate about having really beautiful light and you know that early morning light, that late afternoon light, or the way sunlight just might pass through a vase and create this incredible sparkle. Um yeah, I I can relate with that with photography too. Yeah, I think I definitely look for the light when I'm capturing photos too. So you mentioned that you exhibited in Brisbane last year. Did you have any others last year as well? Yes, I I did one in December, which was a you know, it was a one-day exhibition because it it turned into a it was um with Jay Jekyll, the environmental artist, and she wanted it to be a fashion show plus an art show and all about um uh streetwear and the big message about um the environment and climate change. So um she feels that my art sits into that um the right pocket there because we align well with our I I I show the beautiful side of nature and how fragile it is and how we need to protect it. And her art and her um streetwear um is the edgier version that gets that real message across about how important it is that we pay attention. Oh no. So while I was at that exhibition and showing my work, in fact, actually it was um I'd done a paid Instagram ad because I don't often do it, but I just thought, gosh, I'm only here for one night. I want to get as much exposure as I can out of this. So I did a really, really reasonably priced Instagram ad, and I thought, oh well, let's see how it goes. And as a result of that, I got an inquiry about one of the paintings I was showing, and is this for sale? And so I said yes, and anyway, um this person didn't ever come and come to the exhibition, but she bought it just from the Instagram ad. Um and it's funny that person who is Sonia Driver from uh Eco by Sonia, the amazing organic skincare range, she was telling me that she had decided that she wanted to have an exhibition in London and she wanted to have an Australian artist. She was talking amongst her team, saying, I want to have an Australian artist, and I want that person to um show off how amazing Australia is and our nature and how beautiful it is and everything. And she blames it on the algorithm of Instagram that all of a sudden my painting started popping up on her Instagram feed, and so she started looking through and looking through, and she found me. So that's unreal. That's kind of the way that whole thing segued into butterfly effects, and like the power of social media, yes, yes, and then yes, the scary algorithms that go on. Well, yeah, this is the thing I feel like a lot of people complain about Instagram, but this is this is a positive story of Instagram, isn't it? Yeah, I think it's it's it's we're getting the feed of what we want to talk about, yeah, what we want to hear. So okay. I know that that can sometimes limit perhaps what else you see. Yeah. But but at least you're honing in. And so then that obviously opened a door to exhibiting in London, which is incredible. Can you tell us more about how what was involved in that? How did you prep? Okay, so um the Eco by Sonia um team have an amazing um uh team of women who I worked with. They created a storyboard based on my existing paintings that I already had. Yeah, right. And the way that they wanted their product to be presented in London, in you know, the other side of the world, they wanted to show the purity, the um um organic nature of what they create and what they have in their product and have that reflected. So um we had a lot of um meetings over the phone and by Zoom, um, and basically I was commissioned to create um a body of work that had to fit on certain walls, and so I did have constraints, and at that point I wanted to work in oil, so I I said I need to know exactly what I have to create, and I've got to do it as fast as I can. So I had I had about seven weeks to create this body of work. How many pieces did you have to do? I had eight pieces in total. Wow, yeah. Um, the largest being 1.2 by 90 centimetres high, and uh I got it all done in time. Our lovely local framer here, um Perent Clark from Port Douglas Picture Framing, did all the framing for me. Fantastic. Packed it all up and um DHL shipped it all to London. Wow, were you terrified? Terrified. Shipping something across. I'm not at least there was no glass or anything like that, and they did an amazing job packing it up. So the day I arrived in in London at the store, I walked in and I couldn't believe it. There was all my heart hanging there in Nottingham. All this you know, beautiful blues and aquas and everything, and they were going, oh my gosh, it's so blue, isn't it? It's so blue. Oh, we're not quite sure. And then once they got it all um with all of their products, they just said we're we're it's our new favourite colour. So I'm so uh like I'm gonna say brown, it's not rather. I just I'm in awe of you, it's so cool. Look, it's just the way our planets aligned, yes, and it worked. And I was prepared to go over there myself because I just thought I can't miss this opportunity. That's what I was gonna say. Yeah, how did you go? Um, you know, yeah, did you get to go to like the opening and all that sort of thing? So we had an opening, um, which was attended by I don't know how many hundred people, it was massive, it was really footage of people lining up down the block. Yes, yeah, yeah, it was incredible. It was phenomenal. Um, yeah, they had catering by Otta Lengi, it was very fancy. Yeah, um, but really beautifully done. And then we had a function the week after for um when Sonia had arrived for Sonia to meet her, the CEO, and to meet myself. And that was an invitation only thing, very small, and um that was lovely. What an amazing experience. It's so cool to see a Port Douglas artist being recognized. Oh, thank you. Well, what I felt so proud of was that I was able to share the beauty of Port Douglas in the grey skies of London and and actually talk to people about it and you know sell the Port Douglas and North Queensland Barrier Reef, Danefree Rainforest story, because the paintings weren't just of the reef, they were also of um our beaches and rainforest. And so one other little story that um I have to share with you um was that I walked into our into this beautiful gallery which was set up with all of the Eco by Sonya product as well. And she had a little corner which um had about half a dozen small paintings that were ones she had collected from marketplace. So, you know, she paid $10, $5, $20, whatever, little little tiny things, but they're all very Australian. Okay, and one of those was a beautiful watercolour by Jeff Whitehill, who, as you know, lived here in Port Douglas, painted St. Mary's Church down here. Oh and I walked in and I saw it, and sure enough, Jeff Whitehill there, it was a print, it wasn't an original, but um beautifully framed. And I said, Oh my gosh, I can't believe you've got that. I have that exact I have that exact one in my own home as well. Wow, and I Um, I was also taught watercolour by Jeff Whitehill. Wow. And also the fact that I got that beautiful print at the wake for Jeff Whitehill at the local yacht club when his family were giving out all of their his old prints, and that's where I got mine. So I just felt there was so many, it was like the planets were just going, Oh, you two, you two, spooky, da-da-da-da-da. Absolutely. Being on wow, wow, wow, wow. Yeah, so she was blown away when she heard that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's just incredible how the world works, isn't it? Yeah, we often have like people wander in here and you start chatting, and next minute you found five connections and something. Somebody remembers coming to make her in Grand Street. Oh, that's so sweet. She remembers that. Oh, that's so nice. I so did not expect her to remember that. Obviously, I remember that. So that's really what I want to hear. I'll have to send her a message and see if she wants to come on the podcast. Oh wow, what a fantastic wow, what a great few years. Yeah, yeah. So that's been lovely. So have you got any other um exhibitions or anything coming up that you're working towards? Well, we have um, I'm part of Port Douglas Artists, which I think your mum is as well. And there's an exhibition in September, October, yeah, which is got the uh I guess the theme Northern Illumination. Oh fantastic. I love that title. Yeah. Um, all about well, it's the north, our beautiful tropical environment, and light. And there, as you know, I spoke about it. That's your favourite scene. My passion is light, and I really am excited about that. So I'm just playing, I'm doing a few sketches at the moment. Yeah. Um, working out what I'm going to put into that. But I'll be starting to do that. Will that be like one piece, or do you get a few spots? Um, we'll get a few, I'd say. It depends on how many um I can produce in that time. If I go large, it'll only be maybe one or two. But if I do this my smaller ones, like my the light that comes through these little um florals, um, still live florals, I could do quite a whole collection of them. So I'm just working through that at the moment. Oh, I'm looking forward to seeing it. It'll be wonderful. It will be it'll be wonderful. So, yes, Port Douglas Artists is uh a wonderful powerhouse of incredible artists. Yeah, we're very truly blessed with the talent we've got here in our local community. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Janet. I would love to end this episode with a piece of advice, maybe something you live by, something for someone who wants to get into art. Is there something you can leave us leave with us today? Yeah, I would say that my biggest thing is to be still a little bit in nature so that you uh stop and observe and don't just rush past it. So in our busy lives, it's just so easy to keep rushing and and uh um not observing what's around us. So it's the stillness and the still moments where you can um not just look at it but really uh get into that moment and let it really resonate with you and stay with you. And if you are inclined, take a photograph. I'm all about taking photos with my cam with my phone as often as I can. Yeah. Um or walk around with a sketchbook. Uh you can have a little tiny one, or a you know, you can go to a big one. Um but I always have a sketchbook with me. It's it's my any even if it's just to write down something, or yeah, it doesn't have to be a full-on sketch, but I do sketch often and draw. Oh that's wonderful. That's that's an awesome piece of advice. Well, thank you. Thank you again so much. Thanks for having me, Rains. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. Um could talk to you all day. Um we will be in your ears very soon, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Um, in the meantime, if you'd like to find Janet, what was your Instagram? Um Janet Morris Artist. Fabulous. Go and check her out, give her a follow, and um yeah, I will also link in the show notes some of the Eco by Sonia exhibition because it was just absolutely stunning, and you should be so proud of yourself. Thank you, Rain. Thanks for having me. Have a great day, guys. Bye.