Jennifer Town

Jennifer Town is primarily a painter with 25 years in the film, television and theatre industry as a scenic artist and prop-maker both in New Zealand and Australia. Her paintings of weathered boat hulls, New Zealand stamps and trompe l’oeil interiors are a direct response to those theatre days and she enjoys working on unusual surfaces like cake tins, driftwood and wooden objects. This has led to a personal art practice using many different media with a leaning towards recycled materials.

Alongside the painting practice, Jennifer creates copper wire baskets decorated with vintage beads and has recently found a new passion weaving and dying large harekeke baskets. Recently Jennifer has been exploring knitting... "...My current obsessions are wool and basketry.

I acquired a spinning wheel and once shown how to use it at the beginning of 2015 I haven't looked back nor have I wanted to pick up a paint brush.

So I'm going to flow with this for a while and see where it takes me.It thrills me to get a raw fleece and feel it catching as I spin the character into it.I love the thick and thin nature of hand spun yarn and the alchemy of how it transforms into a material once knitted.

I'm certainly no technical knitter but I don't have to be to make a wearable garment and the yarn does all the hard work for me.I can custom blend my fibres and produce totally unique colours.It's limitless.."