Jennifer Gibney - Café culture an inspiration

PAINTING THE TOWN: The mural 'Fairytales', which Jenny Gibney adapted from a set in a Mansfield Young Players production, is on display at Central General Practice in Highett Street. It is one of the many pieces in the town created by Jenny.

Maintaining her love for art over a 30 year period, Jenny Gibney deals with a multitude of mediums including painting, jewellery, drawing and sculpture. Upon leaving high school, Jenny studied painting and drawing at Prahran Institute of Technology. She worked in fabric design and screen printing, which led her to increase her knowledge in numerous varieties of fine art such as sculpture and painting. Over the past 25 years she has developed her own style of ceramic sculpture and has had a successful partnership with antiquarian bookseller, Kay Craddock, exhibiting a collection of work in Collins Street, Melbourne.
Jenny has created a lot of paintings, which hang on the walls of Tarts, Mansfield Regional Produce Store and the Aspen Tavern to name a few. And it is from Mansfield's vibrant café culture where she gets a lot of her inspiration. "Most of my subjects are people and I love getting inspiration from people's personalities by portraying their humor," Jenny said. Jenny's art has also been extremely versatile as her heavy involvement with the Mansfield Musical and Dramatic Society (MMuDS) for the last 10 years has provided the organisation with many backdrops and costume design. She also helped set up the Mansfield Young Players with her daughter, which has also been a success. Her daughter Simone has also been an inspiration, as she recently finished an arts degree at Deakin University, Burwood. "This involved going to many exhibitions in Melbourne, which I thoroughly enjoyed," Jenny said. "It was really good fun to help her with her course and go and look at all the art. "I was reborn with my art in a way."
Jenny said art was not something you make a fortune out of, but it makes for a good, fun life.

For more information visit Jenny Gibney's website.

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Photo and editorial by Steve Kelly, Journalist at the Mansfield Courier
Phone: 57752115
Direct: 57331108
Mobile: 0427 050798
Email: edit.mcourier@nenews.com.au

Arts Council of Mansfield
Victoria, Australia

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