Local Legend: Tatts artistic

Andrew Mathieson
TATTOOS painfully needled onto the skin often tell tales of tough lives and hardships.
Artist Janne Kearney has her own past struggles but prefers to keep them hidden away while admiring body artwork from a safe distance behind an artist’s canvas.
As a painter specialising in images of tattooed bodies, Janne declares she has “virgin skin”.
“I wouldn’t be able to choose a tattoo for my own body or I’d want to change them all the time,” she says.
“But pain might have a little bit to do with it, too.”
Still, 47-year-old Janne can feel empathy with the pain her subjects have endured under the dreaded tattoo needle. Her first paint strokes came with their own pain.
Janne was the first Australian female painter and decorator back in 1981 when the profession was a closed shop to women. As a determined teenager, Janne sat exams twice just to get the elusive job at Ford’s Geelong plant.
“That was when equal opportunity was just fledgling,” she remembers.
“There were no reasons why they couldn’t hire a female painter and decorator but they tried to find as many reasons as they could.
“It was a really harrowing experience. I was only able to last two years because I was treated really unfairly by a lot of people.
“You expect it to be tough when you’re an apprentice but it was a lot more bullying and the comments were all about being a woman and taking their son’s jobs.”
Janne was left to clean and sand around the factory floor for the first 18 months, only occasionally painting the odd office but mainly grotty machinery parts.
“You name the dirtiest jobs in the place and I would have been given it,” Janne regrets.
“We were often painting the press line and I was covered in this greasy muck. The cleaner said it was too dirty for him to clean, so they got me to clean it.”
After years of managing a local paint store and then a job as a colour consultant for household interiors, Janne finally turned her creative talent to her own Geelong West home.
Beside the sharp, contrasting colours of the walls, a dazzling mural features in a bay window ceiling.
“I did that 15 years ago after my son was born while he was sleeping,” she smiles.
Always dabbling in drawing and painting, Janne was privately inspired by an elderly Geelong portrait artist who fought a long battle with cancer while still teaching her new techniques.
Slowly Janne pushed aside her nine-to-five job while spending up to eight hours a day perfecting her art.
Whether it’s teaching or selling, art now makes Janne more money.
“I hope my work opens up minds on people with tattoos because there’s a lot more to it than just landscapes and stills,” she quips.
So far Janne has finished 14 works and has a further six waiting in the wings. She will snap hundreds of photos of a tattoo just to get one composition good enough for a painting. But in the name of all, time can be irrelevant.
“Tattoos are a rite of passage for some people,” Janne observes.
“It’s like a constant reminder to put the past behind them and move forward.