Tauranga artist Jenny Coker creates timeless paintings. Photo/John Borren
Tauranga artist Jenny Coker creates timeless paintings. Photo/John Borren
Imagine how special it would be to capture your great-grandmother's necklace, your family's china or your mother's favourite flower with a painting just for you. Now you can.
Inspired by her own collection of family treasures, Tauranga watercolour and oil artist Jenny Coker creates commissioned art featuring family keepsakes.
Jennyis a multitalented artist who paints florals, botanicals, still life and portraiture in watercolour and oil. She has participated in several Tauranga Garden and Arts Festivals and will feature in an episode of the popular Australian show Colour In Your Life, which screens across the globe this month.
Jenny's Nostalgia series is a collection of small oil paintings taking a modern approach, showcasing items such as pearls, silverware, roses, poetry books and more. Jenny, who is inspired by early masters such as Vermeer and Degas, enjoys creating a unique blend to celebrate family history, unique tokens of remembrance or to commemorate a birthday or milestone.
"I get great pleasure from building detailed images of precious items into evocative, timeless paintings that capture a family's story," she says.
"It's about interpreting the qualities of age with a modern twist."
Jenny loves taking a personal journey with her clients. She spends time with each family, sketching different layouts and concepts before deciding on a composition together. "One of my nostalgia commissions features a tea set, a piece of music, a bible and a bracelet that is more than 100 years old," she says.
"In this case, Grandma loved my idea of pouring rosebuds out of the cup against a billowy sky. It's interesting to discuss the different options, allow my creative ideas to flow and involve client ideas at the same time."
One of Jenny's personal pieces, Patisserie with Aunty Anne, features her grandmother's beautiful Tuscan china tea set with a tiny angel holding a fork.
"My Aunty Anne chose this tea set for my grandparents as a wedding present in the early 1920s. The clouds signalling the end of a stormy day came from a memory of the pavlova-like formations looming over the Bay of Bengal on a flight home from Europe.
Tauranga artist Jenny Coker's painting of a teaset that belonged to her parents. Photo/John Borren
"You can see it's a composition you'd never find in reality. While I paint in a Flemish style, it's like I have a Daliesque voice in the back of my head saying 'let's go play in the naughty corner!'."
Jenny's home and studio overlooking the Tauranga harbour is a place of inspiration for visitors.
It's about interpreting the qualities of age with a modern twist.
"Wandering around the garden, flicking through art books and looking at my originals helps people identify what they'd like me to interpret in their artwork," she says. "I enjoy every moment and it's a privilege to be selected to paint for each family."
Jenny started her career in watercolours then decided to learn the time-consuming technique of the early Flemish oil painters. She has attended various workshops will be spending a week at the Florence Academy of Art this year.
"My love of art rests squarely in the academic principles of classical drawing and painting," says Jenny.
*For more on Jenny's art, see www.jennycoker.com. Watch Jenny's Colour In Your Life episode on her website from Thursday.
