Artist, Designer, Maker

Joanna Reid, artist and designerJoanna Reid

It means a lot for me to share my love of Australian native flora and fauna, art and design. I view the world in a very original way and if you’re visiting my site, perhaps you do too. My childhood was spent with the frangipanis and beautiful songs of Bougainville, (PNG) beside the Solomon Sea, so I guess nature has always been close. I have traveled for a large part of my life, collecting many adventures along the way – the best one yet has been travelling into life with my smart and beautiful daughter, watching her becoming such an amazing person.

Abstract painting of Australian coastal scene.
Beachscape, Joanna Reid, acrylic on canvas, 2015.

I did my formal art studies at Queensland College of Art and then worked on a wide variety of graphic design accounts in Sydney and London before starting my own studio on the Gold Coast and Byron Bay.

Inspired by the natural beauty of Northern New South Wales, I began drawing and painting the places around me, and in particular the country’s unique flora.

My work shows a very distinctive flair for design and colour and reflects my unique feelings and impressions of Australia’s natural environment. Its a bit hard to describe your own work but if it can encourage viewers to stop and appreciate the wonderful diversity and grand design of our great outdoors, then I’m on the right track.

I use my paintings and drawing as inspiration for the fabric print designs. The paintings tend to be strong and evocative stylisations of Australian flora and lend themselves well to being taken up in the design process. New technologies like digital fabric printing have given me much more flexibility in terms of how much detail can be reproduced and allows for more colour control. In between painting and making things I love experimenting with lino cut printing and have become quite obsessed with tea cosies…what is it about tea cosies that just makes them so expressive! 

I established Wildhome Designs’ online store in 2015 to showcase my design work and hopefully make a living from selling my range of home decorator textiles, crafts, digital designs and fine art reproductions.

When I can, I’ve been helping out with Bush Heritage Australia as a volunteer, meeting some amazing people working on bush regeneration projects. Its such a great organisation and I really respect the work they do to regenerate land to it’s natural state.  This is their link if you’re interested: www.bushheritage.org.au

Thank you for supporting my work.
Joanna Reid