Jenny Clapson,
P.O. Box 536,
Kingscote.
KANGAROO ISLAND.
South Australia. 5223
Phone: 08 85539103
Fax: 08 85533025
Email: jenny@jennyclapson.com.au

I was born in Broken Hill, N.S.W. and apart from going away to boarding school for 4 years to Sydney/Bathurst, lived there until aged 18, when I enrolled in the South Australian School of Art, Adelaide. While studying at Art School I found like minded friends and through them, a confirmation of my beliefs.

Exposure to station owners and their way of life, the vast spaces, desert patterns and colours and life in a city in the outback were the experiences of my early life. Contact with an emerging group of Broken Hill artists and a family background in the arts helped in my decision to go away to Art School.

Graduating with a Diploma of Fine Arts and the John Christie Wright Memorial Prize for Life Drawing and Painting, I left Adelaide to live on Kangaroo Island, a large island off the coast of South Australia where I still live on the farm my husband's family has held since the early 1900's.

I have worked in many mediums as an artist over the last 29 years, - oils, watercolour/gouache, acrylic murals, printmaking and have completed many commissions, illustrated a children's book for Macmillans, taught TAFE, completed several community artists projects, owned a Gallery at the Kingscote Wharf for 6 years and have been in many exhibitions.

I began printmaking with Solarplates in 1995, a new form of printmaking developed in America by Dan Weldon which uses UV light to expose the plate and which is a healthier and more environmentally sound printmaking process than the etchings I was doing previously.

My artwork is held in the South Australian Art Gallery, Adelaide, and in the National Gallery, Canberra, as well as other private and public collections in Australia and overseas.

My art work grows out of the daily events of my life, whether exploring the creek lines, camping on the beach, caught up in the failing wool industry of the 1990's on the farm, establishing a new business on the Kingscote Wharf or surfing life at the beach with family and friends.

Underscoring all this is the intrinsic quality of Kangaroo Island - its isolation, colours, geography and the wealth and proximity of its wildlife and natural vegetation, - close and part one's life.