Celebrated Australian Artist Janine Daddo and has enjoyed sell-out exhibitions across Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Chicago.
Daddo’s enthusiasm for life and sense of fun, allows her to gain great joy from the everyday moments that most of us take for granted. These moments are the inspiration for her paintings, that depict love, life and the joys of everyday. Their figurative forms and playful ideas recreate the innocence and magic of youth. Her confident use of colours, bold textures and line, help to convey this enthusiasm, whether it be the the little things in life that we felt as children, or the passion that new love brings.
Janine Daddo is a lucky person. She always wanted to be a painter. And in fulfilling her dreams, she has become a highly successful one - by sharing her happiness with others. Yet, luck is no matter of chance. You have to strive for serendipity. Her enthusiasm for life expressed in her joyous, colourful paintings emerges from one touched with tragedy. As always, the way we handle adversity defines our character, for those nightmares in life’s journey are times of unbelievable blackness. Yet, they seem to be necessary experiences that precede the pathway to perceptions of light and joy in the perception and expression of unbounded beauty. Daddo communicates this exuberance through her art, and is one of the reasons why it is so popular. Another is her gifts is this means of communication, schooled at RMIT in graphic art and design, developed through fashion illustration, and finely honed in the world of advertising in Sydney and Melbourne. Her paintings are conversational and attractively packaged in seductive colours. Numerous sell-out exhibitions provide their own testimony.
Artists are very fortunate people in being able to see anew the everyday world with a freshness and enthusiasm, which they share through the works they create. As in Daddo’s paintings, a kitchen scene becomes a chaos of delight, the diurnal becomes the extraordinary. Her imagery is familiar, friendly, and highly appealing, with an echo of Charles Blackman in whose house she once lived in Sydney. Influence came by osmosis, rather than directly, found in her love of colour, figuration, and certain lyrical touches, especially of flowers and lovers, as in A Little Romance. Her Secret Garden series probably owe part of their genesis to the same neighbour’s garden which Blackman looked onto from his studio window. This secret place for Daddo is one of freedom, completely relaxed and open. In large Secret Garden 2007, the richness of the reds create the mood and capture the passion, in harmony with the embrace and intertwining of the figures, repeated in the sinuous lines of the flower forms of the background.
The richness of her colours comes from her technique of layered surfaces, usually working in opposites, from darks to lights, from turquoise and jade to reds. The layering gives added texture, glimpses of underlying colours added variety, topped by a final glaze to express the wonderment of life. Birds and bare-bosoms are metaphors of freedom, as likewise paintings of childhood memories, of innocence recollected and, To the Moon and Back, the possibility of dreams. As the spring of youth finds fullness in summer, Summer Garden parades the blossoming of womanhood, of letting go and becoming woman. A background in fashion provides touches of the fashionable, the beauty of the beautiful, and the eye of seeing. Daddo says, ‘Painting for me is like creating a conversation, a memory, a yearning.’
Janine has enjoyed ‘sell-outs’ in Sydney, Melbourne and Chicago, and her work is now enjoyed in private collections throughout Australia and as far afield as London, New York and Singapore.
Select Recent Exhibitions
2025 – ‘XOX’, Celebrating 25 Years of Janine Daddo, Manyung Gallery Art & Design
2025 – ‘Summer Art Soiree’, Manyung Gallery Sorrento
2024 - ‘Spring Fever!’, Manyung Gallery Art & Design
2024 – ‘Let Love Rain’, Manyung Gallery Malvern
2024 – ‘Valentine’s Day Feature’, Manyung Gallery Strathmore
2024 – ‘Local Artists Soiree’, Manyung Gallery Sorrento
2024 – Affordable Art Fair Melbourne & Sydney
2023 – ‘The Collectors Canvas’, Manyung Gallery Malvern
2023 – Affordable Art Fair, Melbourne, Sydney & Singapore
2023 – ‘They Dreamt Themselves a Garden’, Manyung Gallery Malvern
2023 – ‘Summer at Manyung’, Manyung Gallery Malvern & Strathmore
2022 – Affordable Art Fair, Melbourne, Sydney & Singapore
2022 – ‘On Coloured Wings They Flew’ Manyung Gallery
2021 – ‘Moments with You’ Jahroc Gallery
2021 – ‘In Beautiful Times’ Gullotti Galleries, Perth
2021 – ‘Your Place or Mine?’ Manyung Gallery Malvern
2020 – ‘Simple Pleasures’, Manyung Gallery Virtual Exhibition
2019 – Affordable Art Fair Singapore, Manyung Gallery Group
2019 – Affordable Art Fair Melbourne, Manyung Gallery Group
2019 – "Beautiful You", Manyung Malvern
2018 – "Champagne Confessions", Manyung Sorrento
2018 – Artitude Telethon Adventures Australia, Perth
2018 – Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong
2018 – Jahroc Gallery, Margaret River, WA
2018 – Wills Domain Wine labels, WA
2017 – “Petals, Blooms & Pom Pom”, Gullotti Galleries, Perth
2017 – Richmond Wellness Centre, Collaborative Piece with
Aboriginal Elder Wendy Hayden
2017 – Affordable Art Fair, Singapore
2017 – Affordable Art Fair, Hong Kong
2017 – Everyday a Sunday, Manyung Malvern
2016 – Affordable Art Fair Singapore, Spring Edition
2016 – Solo Exhibition, Manyung Gallery Malvern
2015 – Manyung Gallery, the Affordable Art Fair, Singapore Spring Edition
2015 – Manyung Gallery, Malvern
2015 – 19 Karen, Queensland
2014 - 'Runaway With Me' Jahroc Gallery Margaret River WA solo show
2014 - Group exhibition, Sorrento Manyung Gallery
2013 - 'Hullabaloo' Gullotti Gallery solo show
2013 - 'Lovers Exhibition' Manyung Gallery Malvern
2013 - Affordable Art Fair Singapore, Manyung Gallery Group
2013 - Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong, Manyung Gallery Group
2013 - Affordable Art Fair Seattle, Manyung Gallery Group
2012 - 'Zipptydodaday' Framed Gallery Darwin
2012 - 'Topsy Turvy' Gullotti Galleries Perth solo show
2012 - Group Show “Beloved”, Manyung at Glenferrie, Malvern
2012 - Solo Show “Life’s Many Pleasures” Manyung at Sorrento
Education
1979-81 – Studied Graphic Art and Design, RMIT,
Melbourne (Honours)
1981 – Worked as illustrator in Fashion and Retail Industry
1982-94 – Advertising career working for several large
& boutique agencies in Melbourne &Syd
1994-present – Full-time mother and artist
Select Awards:
2014 - Selected to be part of 'Melbourne Art Trams'
2013 - Finalist. Salon De Refuse, Hilton Melbourne
2004 - Frankston High School, ‘Best Contemporary Work’
2003 - Kunyung Arts Festival, ‘Best Acrylic/Oil on Show’
Collections and Commissions:
Private collections in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Chicago, Hong Kong, Israel, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Singapore
Publications:
- The Age, Melbourne, January 17, 2008
- Coast Magazine, December 2011