American born and raised Joie Villeneuve is an artist who is fluent in the language of her own symbology. It’s evident in the landscapes she creates, ones lush with birds and fauna and shapes and colours that iterate a distinct voice, one piqued with playful angles and curiosity.

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Villeneuve’s new exhibition at Gadfly Gallery, The Turning of the New Leaf, explores her unique visual language within an Australian context, transforming that which is old into newer phrases and expressions. The result is a rich dialogue of colour, landscape and emotion.

‘I spent 4 months intensely painting in the U.S. and had those works shipped back to Australia for this show,’ Villeneuve told OUTinPerth of the process behind putting this show together.

‘This series of work is a culmination of the experiences I had of moving to Australia a year and a half ago with my Australian partner, how it affected me on a deeper level, thus the title – The Turning of the New Leaf – as one does when they are uncovering new parts of themselves and transforming the old into something new.’

Villeneuve admits that moving to Australia has successfully taken her out of her comfort zone.

‘It has truly not been following the path of least resistance,’ she confided. ‘It is so easy to keep creating in a life that is “comfortable” but there aren’t the same opportunities to find ones weaknesses and work on realising your true self by polishing the diamond (or) removing the rough edges.

‘At first I found the birds in Australia to be much more “screechy” and loud unlike the songbirds in America. I learned that everything we experience especially with the 5 senses is simply a reflection or projection of oneself. I’m learning to sing more and screech less.’

Throughout Villeneuve’s work are recurrent images, this time many recognisable pieces of Australian flora and fauna, all of them rendered in a style reminiscent of Kadinsky or American artist Squeak Carnwath. And as mentioned above, Villeneuve has also incorporated images of birds quite extensively into her paintings.

‘The bird (is) a symbol for many things and I use the bird in this recent body of work,’ Villeneuve says of her symbology, which contains flora and the majesty of birds. ‘One of the things the bird symbolises is “freedom”: one’s freedom in the highest sense, freedom from the things in life that pull us down and make us believe we are less than who we really are. Because a bird has the ability to fly above and fly away, or more importantly fly to a place that better suits it.

‘Part of accepting who one is is to empower oneself and create the life you want to live. A lot of us grow up feeling that we are different than our peers and that’s a negative thing. It becomes important that we empower ourselves by creating an environment that encourages our unique qualities.

‘If we don’t resonate with something or someone we can fly where we do resonate and relate. The ability to fly above something, move beyond, change one’s point of view by getting a higher perspective, this is the “secret life of birds”.’

Joie Villeneuve’s The Turning of The New Leaf is on now at Gadfly Gallery until December 20. To view Villeneuve’s work visit www.joiladesigns.com/Joie and www.gadflygallery.com.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell