Jodi Lewis
Background
Jodi Lewis is a self-taught artist whose inspiration comes from the artists who painted realistic portraits in the hundreds of years before photography. Their likeness of the subject, the details, the colours, the overall tones and placements, often completed in dim light and testing circumstances. A moment in time that took time, and deft skill to capture. Their modern moment that is now how we see, and extrapolate, history; a lasting legacy.
Jodi studied under South Australian pastel artist Janine Parsons at Murray Bridge High School, and has developed a similar level of detail in her own work. Since transitioning from greyscale sketches with graphite pencils, she now creates multi-hued oil paintings, and her own little slice of history through the lens of realism.
Jodi began her artistic journey in South Australia (selected to paint a mural in the Festival of Arts, grade 4 primary school), developed her skills living a few decades up and down the coast of Queensland (the inspirational canvas of her life), and is now located in Shepparton, northern country Victoria, where she has exhibited at the annual SAM OPEN each year since its inception in 2022.
Philosophy
As an artist and an adoptee raised amid secrets and silences, Jodi is driven to build a visual language rooted in absolute honesty. Her paintings reject distortion, loose abstraction, and superficial gestures in favor of clear, uncompromising truth.
Through an intensive, highly methodical focus on detail, Jodi builds her work through delicate, complex layers of colour—crafting intricate surfaces that resist simple replication and demand quiet, sustained attention.
Ultimately, Jodi's goal is to create work that moves beyond technical precision. While she strives for a striking realism infused with a distinct sense of beauty, she wants every piece to resonate deeply with the viewer through deliberate lighting, atmosphere, and emotional mood.
Style
Jodi's unique artistic paint style has developed over the years to become more elaborate and realistic, using the smallest of paint brushes, and maybe a finger or four, to build delicate depth and tones.
Oil paint allows Jodi to bring lifelike colour and softness of form to her paintings, with layered details creating three-dimensional realism that reflects the multifaceted nature of human experience. The medium gives Jodi the time to blend and refine each painting, just as we refine our understanding of ourselves and others over time. The long-lasting nature of oil paint mirrors the lasting impact of the moments she seeks to preserve—the connection between what is seen and unseen, known and hidden.