DALIA SABLE

DESTRUCTION can be the seed for the new and beautiful. This is the credo behind Melbourne artist Nita Jawary’s new exhibition, Chequered Breezes, which opened this week.

Drawing on the poem The Seed by poet Vasko Popa for inspiration, the exhibition at Wine Justice in Melbourne features a collection of mixed-media landscapes and florals.

“It is to do with what grows out of a seed and how something beautiful can come from something ugly,” Jawary explains, adding that “you can look at [the paintings] and look at them and keep seeing new things”.

Like her art, Jawary’s life has ushered in new things.

Originally working in journalism, Jawary says that despite always wanting to draw, she had a longstanding complex about her artistic inabilities spanning back to her schooldays.

“I always had a hankering, so one day I set up still lifes at home and I began painting,” she recalls. “I’ve just kept going ever since.”

And going she has been. Jawary held her first solo exhibition in 2003 in aid of asylum seekers. The following year, she showcased the illustrations from the electronic book she compiled of family stories and recipes, titled The Perpetual Table.

“As far as my art goes, I am grateful to the women in my life -– my mother, my aunt and my grandmother,” Jawary explains.

“They were very creative -– creative in the kitchen, creative at the sewing table and in art, jewellery-making and painting. I am grateful for that.”

As her style has evolved -– Jawary initially worked with pastels before being encouraged to work with oil and acrylic paints –- so too has her perception of art.

“I have started to understand that the beauty of a painting is not in its capacity to be a photograph, it’s in the artist’s stamp on the world,” she says. “It has to have the artist’s vision, something of the artist in it.”

Chequered Breezes runs until December 31 at Wine Justice, 26 Waltham St Sandringham. Enquiries: www.nita.com.au.