Finding the beauty in the smallest detail

Walking around Little Blue Wren Gifts & Art gallery with artist Jane McCumstie you can’t help but be caught up in how she talks you through her latest solo exhibition – The Awe and Wonder of the Ordinary.

It is more than her passion for this project, more than just her love of art and more than her zest for life, it is her attention to detail and seeing the extraordinary in everything.

“The beauty is found in the little details of life, the ordinary things,” Jane said. “The beautiful rock you pick up, the wind rustling in the trees, the music I’m listening to, something I’m reading – I have always have a trigger that inspires me.”

So if you haven’t taken in Jane’s exhibition yet it is now in its last week and you should head to Mount Gambier’s newest art space and see how thoughts like that translate onto canvas, along with the brief but thoughtful explanations of each work provided by the artis herself.

If you had to pigeonhole Jane’s work in this Little Blue Wren exhibition, she would label it abstract mixed media.

“I take an idea, extract it, push and pull it,” Jane said. “I get there in the end with some resistance – as I work I am always thinking ‘where is this going?’ I have the story in my head and it is a matter of then putting it into my work.”

Jane, a relative newcomer to the Limestone Coast, calling Millicent home, loves the Little Blue Wren Gifts & Art gallery space and was thrilled to have the opportunity to exhibit her work in the new space. “It’s so filled with light,” Jane said.

And that light is showcasing her work, much of which is inspired by her new home in the Limestone Coast, but for Jane it all started at her childhood home.

“I grew up on a property in the middle of New South Wales,” she said. “Big skies, red dirt and spending time on the back of a horse mustering.”

That explains her love of the outdoors and the role nature plays in her creative process and a family full of creative types points to why art became the way Jane was destined to express herself.

“Mum was always making or creating and we were doing the same by her side,” Jane said. “We didn’t even get a TV, which was second hand, until I as nine or 10. There are a lot of people in my family that art artistic.”

Jane traces her first meaningful work in her 20s when she attended her first watercolour class. “That was kind of it – I was hooked and just kept going to classes,” she said. “And no matter what I did, I always end up floating back to watercolours.”

Jane took every opportunity she could to learn and after plying her trade in watercolours for more than a decade, exhibiting that work.

“But I did feel like I had exhausted it – the flowers, the gardens – I wanted more,” she said. “It would have been in my 30s and I had two paintings to put into an exhibition so I decided I wanted to do something else. It all changed for me when I saw this work The Fisherman’s Net – it was extraordinary, you wanted to reach out and touch it and that’s when I realised that’s what I wanted to do.”

Knowing that mixed media was in her future was one thing – achieving that to a high level was another. “I began experimenting but realised I didn’t have the technique.”

New South Wales artist Val Fitzpatrick was a huge influence and as she had her whole career, Jane knew learning at every opportunity was the key so from her home in the Blue Mountains, that’s exactly what she did.

“No one could teach you to be artistic but they could teach you techniques, you had to find your own path.”

And Jane has found her own path. She has now been painting for more than three decades and considers the past decade to be when art truly became a full time pursuit.

The foundation of that art practice is simple. “Each painting should give you a feeling,” Jane said. “The same way you look at a bookshelf and I know the feeling each book there gives me.”

So from the Blue Mountains to Canberra to a 26th floor apartment in Manilla in the Philippines, where she was living due to her husband’s work, to now, Millicent, art is what has remained her constant.

“Thank God for my art,” she said. “Art is always my friend, especially when I am on my own.”

Deciding Millicent as their forever home was influenced in no small part by how inspirational this region is for Jane and her art practice.

“I find this area incredibly inspiring and ever changing,” Jane said. “The Blue Lake – it changes every day, every time you see it – I love it here.

“My husband is a musician – we both need space and a creative space.”

Getting to Millicent was not without its challenges as the couple, due to COVID, had to isolate almost at every turn, despite driving non-stop at one stage to get to Millicent to beat yet another border closure.

But once here, exploring the region became a priority and Jane has found inspiration at every turn. “I will never forget our first drive to Southend – that cliff face just struck me,” Jane said, with one of the works on display in her current exhibition inspired by that first Southend visit.

“I paint by feeling, I make a narrative in my head and I hold it in there until I have expressed it – it is why I sometimes paint in a series,” Jane said. “I love texture and movement and colour. It’s peaceful here, it’s not spoiled, its special.

“It’s got everything we want and need and for an artist it’s incredible, it’ really inspirational. Jane’s exhibition is on show until Saturday.