VALE: JO MEISNER 1954 – 2019
Jo Meisner was not only a dear friend to many. She was a driven, passionate and compassionate artist making exciting and engaging art. Alluring, colourful, light-filled works that draw people in to look, wonder and relate, often prompting a sharing of their own stories of that aspect of human experience which so fascinated Jo - how we can be together yet apart - the lonely crowd. Lisa Sharp, Artist
Jo (Joanne) Meisner was born in Sydney. Jo attended the School of Fashion, East Sydney Technical College between 1971 – 4, at that time the first dedicated fashion design school in Sydney. Subsequently, she held a professional career in the fashion industry for thirty-seven years, owning and managing multiple stores and mentoring women in business. In 2012 Jo returned to that same campus in Darlinghurst, now the National Art School, where she applied her characteristic intensity, curiosity and passion to the visual arts. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours (Painting) in 2016. In a second career that was to be all too short, Jo had built a strong reputation for her vibrant figurative works and had held four solo and numerous group exhibitions, most significantly a solo exhibition in Paris in 2018 with work following from a residency in 2017. Her works often featured textiles, layered with photography and other media, driven by an underlying socio-political commentary. Jo’s fascination and affinity for cloth drew on her past, as she explored the divergent qualities of cloth as tactile source of comfort and protection but also a politicised marker of individual as well as communal identity. Jo used to say of her ongoing fascination with textiles, we are wrapped in cloth from birth to death. Jo passed away peacefully, after a brief final illness in September 2019, leaving her loving husband Phillip, children Ben, Joshua and Sam, grandchildren and a large and loving crowd of family and friends. We will all miss her special warmth and empathy. “Belonging is central to how we define who we are. It is our connection to social groups and society as a whole that is most important in constructing this sense of identity. This is a fundamental aspect of what I feel it is to be human.” www.jomeisner.com.au
Jo Meisner and I in the studio of Suzanne Valadon, Paris, 2018 (Photograph: Lisa Sharp) Lisa Sharp, Sep 2019 This piece was also published on the National Art School Vale site.