Joanna Brown is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Walyalup, Fremantle whose ever evolving exploration of botanical environments inspire her symmetrical, bold, and mesmerising illustrations.

With a background in Visual Arts (Curtin University), Art Teaching, and a Masters in Art Therapy (Edith Cowan University), Joanna’s career has spanned teaching, fashion design, stage décor, and large-scale installations, alongside running a freelance design business that caters to government and private clients in the music and cultural sectors. Focusing on public art in recent years, Joanna is able to transform her interest in how plant life shapes our visual and emotional landscapes into large-scale formats, serving as quiet yet powerful connectors across communities.

When asked about her creative practice, Joanna noted that it is grounded in close observation and slow, site-responsive engagement.

“I begin by walking – through suburban streets, bush remnants, and neglected edges of the built environment – attuning myself to the overlooked life that persists and adapts in these spaces.”

Gathering imagery through digital drawing, Joanna often works directly from viewing the plants and fungi she finds along the way.

“Fossicking at the base of trees, noting seasonal shifts, and pausing to notice the shape of a leaf or the sudden appearance of a mushroom, all become acts of connection.”

These small moments, of noticing what often goes unnoticed, shape the ways in which Joanna understands place and the botanical world around her. When starting a botanical piece, Joanna finds that she is drawn in first by the visual qualities of her subject: the form, structure, and way the plants behave in the space.

“Sometimes it’s a strange silhouette, an unexpected colour shift, or the way something grows a little defiantly on the edge of the path.”

Joanna is particularly inspired by native Australian plants; their wildly unexpected, spiky, tangled, or oddly delicate forms instinctively pulling her in. Once she starts to work with the subject, drawing it digitally and playing with form, scale, and repetition, the symbolic and emotional layers begin to emerge.

“Native Australian botanicals are especially compelling to me because they carry such weight – ecologically, historically, and culturally. They’re deeply tied to place and memory, and especially when portrayed alongside non-native species, they start to raise questions about colonisation, adaption, and geobotanical entanglement.”

Joanna acknowledges that although her entry point to a piece is often guided by aesthetics, she is able to connect with subjects due to the deeper resonances they convey; how each plant has a layered story, whether it has moved, been introduced, or been displaced, and what those movements say about us.

“Even something as simple as a gum leaf can evoke incredibly complex associations, depending on who’s looking at it and where.”

There is something innately mesmerising and calming in the symmetry and repetition that feature in Joanna’s designs. Although Joanna does not approach her work with the explicit intention of it being therapeutic for others, she believes the sensitivities she developed through her Art Therapy training are woven into the way she works and what she gravitates towards visually. The process of creating her designs is a meditative one; the act of isolating, shifting, mirroring, and composing plant elements becomes a form of quiet conversation between Joanna and the material.

“It’s less about controlling the image and more about noticing what relationships emerge. I often find that a sense of emotional resonance comes not from aiming for a particular feeling, but from playing close attention and letting the work build intuitively.”

Talking about how she hopes people resonate with her work, Joanna noted that she’s not aiming to prescribe a specific feeling or meaning and would rather the work acts as a kind of gentle companion, shifting as the viewer does, and helping to anchor them in a sense of place.

“My work isn’t loud, but it does ask you to slow down and notice, much like the plants they are based on. I think of the pieces as a kind of pause, a moment to reflect on the places we move through every day.”

Speaking specifically on her botanical placemats sold in Store, Joanna shared that they have been a playful and practical extension of her practice.

“It’s a way to bring Australian design to the table – literally – and invite botanical storytelling into shared meals and everyday rituals.”

Whether someone is living with one of her smaller works or passing by one of her public pieces on their daily commute, Joanna hopes her work can offer a moment of visual and emotional grounding, something that can feel both familiar and quietly transformative.

Images courtesy of Bo Wong and Joanna Brown.