Photography: Anna Briggs
With a deep, grounded palette, Briana Jamieson’s work is transporting. Inspired by nature and everyday objects, the Wellington-based artist wraps her art into paintings, textiles and poetry.
Tell us about your creative journey so far.
I studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Massey University, finishing in 2015. After art school, I slowly worked on my paintings, but it wasn’t until my first exhibition with Precinct 35 in 2020 that I felt like my painting career really started. All my paintings in the show sold very quickly and it felt very encouraging that I was creating work that people wanted and were excited by.
I have been showing work with Prak (from Precinct 35) and Nadya ever since, with their store and gallery, Kaukau, which they opened in 2021. It’s been a beautiful time, showing a few exhibitions of paintings with Kaukau every year, as well as some one-off shows with other galleries in Aotearoa and Australia. I started off making paintings in my bedroom, filling the walls with my works. And then in 2022, I was able to move into a beautiful studio space in the city, which is shared with 14 other creatives.
Nature appears in so much of your work. What elements in particular inspire you?
The calming, refreshed, grounding feeling I get from time in nature is something I like to bring into my paintings. I often plan a series of paintings while sitting outside somewhere; on a grass hill under some trees, somewhere peaceful, soaking up the sun. I also enjoy gardening and growing flowers, herbs and vegetables. I get a lot of inspiration from plants growing in my own garden and others’.
Are your paintings of objects like food or furniture pre-empted by stories or real-life examples?
Yes, I often see something and get inspired by it and want to paint it. Like a calm evening at home, sitting out on the deck, eating cake out of beautiful stoneware bowls. I get inspired to create paintings of the colours, arrangement of food and atmosphere of the moment.
Your writing is beautiful. What comes first, the poetry or the painting?
A bit of both, but recently I have been painting first and experimenting and seeing where that takes me. Then, as I near the end of creating the series, I will spend some time reflecting on the work and creating a piece of writing that captures the essence of what I was exploring in the paintings.
What influences your colour palette?
I am drawn to colours that feel warm, grounded and calming to me. I create folders of photos and screenshots on my phone that I use as inspiration for what colours I want to paint with.
A lot of your paintings are objects on an isolated background. What draws you to painting something singular?
By doing this, I am aiming for a sense of calm. When I know a painting has worked, I often get a good, calm feeling from it.
What does your perfect day of creating look like?
A day at the studio painting, where it just flows and works, and I create a painting in a day. There is a very satisfying rush of joy when that happens. A future dream day would be working in a small home studio somewhere in a garden setting. In between paintings, I take rests sitting in the garden with all my plants.
Tell us about how your collaboration with Penny Sage came to be.
Kate Megaw got in touch with me to see if I would like to collaborate with them and have some of my paintings used as a print on some of their pieces. We chose the paintings together – a collection of three roses I had painted while living by the sea. And the Penny Sage team designed the print from photos of the paintings. I then created a new series of paintings to show in the store, alongside the release of the collection.
Are there any mediums you’d like to try?
I have recently been exploring working with clay and glazes, which has been so enjoyable and leaves me feeling refreshed and full of inspiration for new oil paintings.
Do you have a favourite collection or painting?
I am particularly fond of my series Wishbone, which was shown at Kaukau in 2022. Everything about that exhibition felt very special to me. It’s full of watery greens, earthy browns and pastel sunsets. I made those paintings in response to a good friend’s collection of poetry. A painting that’s been a favourite of mine for a long time is one I made in 2021, titled Jonquils. It’s a brown painting of a patch of jonquils I saw growing in the Botanic Gardens one spring.
What do you have on the horizon for your art?
After some very special exhibitions and collaborations in the past year, this year I am working away in the studio on a whole lot of new ideas I’ve been dreaming up for my painting practice.
How can our readers find your work?
You can find my work at brianajamieson.com and @brianajamieson on Instagram. These studio photos were taken while I worked towards my show, Clay & Paint with Zoe Isaacs, which can be viewed online at kaukau.co.nz/collections/clay-paint.
Read more:
- Inside Morgan Paige Taitoko’s world of soft focus and distortion
- Year of art: Evie Kemp’s Our House of True Colours brings colour to life
- Year of Art: Meet Marsha Smith, the creative behind ‘Verdant Blush’
