Artist

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Jodie Wells

Tasmanian born, but now based on the Gold Coast, Jodie has been practicing art since 1997 and has since been exhibiting extensively around Australia since 2007. 

Jodie manages to capture her images in what is perceived to be minimal broad strokes of paint, spread with a palette knife. Her richly textured style combined with a dramatic colour palette creates vivid interpretations of nature.

The popularity of Jodie's paintings lies in her affable subjects and the direct sensory appeal of their thick, buttery textures. They express a contemporary desire for a more natural state of being; a return to tactility and away from an electronic, virtual reality. Jodie's textures are overtly real, not simulated. We are seduced with surfaces that sparkle as light bounces from the troughs and crests of her palette knife's passage. The dynamism of the markings have endowed the paintings a life of their own.

"What inspired me to paint the way I do? It was a single moment," she declares. "I had been painting for a year or two, then we visited the Art Gallery of NSW and I saw a painting by Peter Booth called Siberia. It was captivating - thick impasto, bold, high contrast. That's when I knew I had to paint like that." 

Jodie Wells' work has been acquired by the Gold Coast City Gallery and she has been a finalist in a great number of Art Prizes including: Sunshine Coast Art Prize, Caloundra, 2015; Moreton Bay Art Prize, Brisbane 2015; Clayton Utz Art Award, Brisbane 2012; Stan and Maureen Duke Art Prize, GCCG 2011; Black Swan Portraiture Prize, Perth 2011, 2009, 2008; Lethbridge 10000 Art Award, Brisbane 2013, 2011, 2010; Mount Eyre Vineyards Art Prize, Rex-Livingston Gallery, Sydney 2011, 2010; Glover Art Prize, Evandale, Tasmania 2010; Border Art Prize 2010, 2008, 2007; Mortimer Art Prize, 2010; Waterhouse Prize - Works on Paper, South Australian Museum, Adelaide 2010; Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (the EMSLA), Coffs Harbour 2009