ONLY 12 months ago Goondiwindi mother and grazier Janet Doyle began a lifelong dream to learn to paint.
In December, she launched her first solo exhibition Ponies and Flowers in Goondiwindi.
Janet runs Malgarai, a cattle property south of Goondiwindi, with her husband Richard and son Nicholas.
A partially completed landscape can be found set upon a wooden easel on the Malgarai verandah with a picturesque view out to the paddocks.
Making time between cattle work, school runs and weekend sport, Janet has amassed an enviable collection of artworks.
The Ponies and Flowers exhibition showcases Janet’s acrylic bold flowers and large atmospheric horse studies, as well as black and white photographs where she has captured familiar scenes of rural life.
Janet said the “daunting” creative process began with a family love of flowers, and in completing the Blooms course with Jacqueline Coates in Brisbane.
“My mother and grandmother loved gardening and I know that having a green garden full of flowers and trees in the bush is a welcome relief from the sometimes harsh conditions beyond the garden gate,” Janet said.
Progressing from flowers she moved on to painting horses and cattle, having grown up sketching horses with her father.
“My grandfather was a very good oil painter, and dad could draw," she said.
"Dad was discouraged by his parents and told to do something practical with a reliable income. The irony is he became a farmer.”
Janet now manages to be both farmer and artist, recently receiving a commission from a South African client requesting a horse portrait and has sold several of her paintings and photographs since opening the exhibition.
“Driving around the paddock the other day looking for inspiration, I’d tell Richard to stop so I could take photos, stop there’s a Murray Grey, an Angus, a Brahman, every cow was a potential artwork.”
