Wendy Arnold’s gently erotic art featuring delicate nudes is finding a world market

William Yeoman reports.

The last thing you’d expect to see when you walk into Dalkeith’s Gadfly Gallery is three otherwise elegant- looking women screaming and jumping about like teenagers at a pop concert.

“You’ve arrived at an opportune moment,” says a breathless Wendy Arnold, whose colourful, gently erotic canvases adorn the gallery’s walls. “A Korean man living in Dubai has just confirmed the purchase of four of the largest works in this exhibition.”

The total spend is around $57,000, so you could forgive Arnold’s enthusiastic reaction. And it gets better.

“The same man has invited me to give an exhibition in Seoul,” she says. “I couldn’t imagine a better start to the day.”

Arnold’s latest Perth exhibition is entitled Kisho Bori, after the “promise engravings” with which 18th-century japanese hug pillow courtesans would be tattooed on those parts of the body normally seen only by lovers.

Partly inspired by Peter Greenaway’s 1996 film The Pillow Book and bearing such titles as Embrace, Geisha, Stockings and Courtesan Reclined, the paintings feature delicate nudes modestly disporting themselves in shimmering abstract landscapes of golds, greens and blues.

Generous expanses of decorative patterns and filigree lacework add to a Klimt-like opulence while recalling Arnold’s previous career as a fashion designer for the iconic 80s art-clothes label Studibaker Hawk, whose work is held in the collections of Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and the National Gallery of Victoria.

“I needed to make some money,” Arnold says as she recalls her time as a struggling young artist. “I had three or four different projects in mind and one was to print designs on fabric and sell them at the market. It really took off.

“Then a couple of friends (designer Janelle Smith and architect David Miles) came on board and we organised our own clothing label,” she says. “At first it was really exciting and we worked extremely hard. We never borrowed one cent and it was a real success story. But after 13 years I was completely jack of it. Not the people – they were fantastic. I just wanted to get back into painting.”

New-Zealand born Arnold arrived in Australia in 1971. After studying painting and printmaking at the then-WA Institute of Technology and setting up Studibaker Hawk she travelled overseas before returning to further her studies, this time at Sydney’s College of Fine Arts. She currently lives with her teenage son Jesse James in a stylishly renovated 1890s cottage in the Sydney suburb of Balmain.

Amazingly, by the time she was six Arnold knew she wanted to be an artist. She was also lucky enough to have a sympathetic father. “He really pushed me to do fine art instead of applied art,” says Arnold. “I didn’t think I’d make any money but dad told me you only get one shot at life and to go for it.”

anime hug pillows

 

Arnold is equally supportive of other artists, not least for her own sanity. Ten years ago she set up the 2+1 Artist Studios, perhaps the biggest art studio in NSW.

“It’s all about trying to find a place where artists can be together,” she says. “An artist’s life can be lonely; there’s that crazy, bohemian part of it but it’s so unstructured and you spend so much time in the studio that you can get really depressed. You need to be a part of the world.”

Arnold strongly believes that everyone is an artist at heart. “Everyone’s creative but people don’t often realise that,” she says. “People should encourage their own creativity wherever they can.”