Artists of 2088: Jo Bertini
- neighbourhoodmedia
- Feb 24
- 3 min read
From Deserts to the Beach: artist Jo Bertini on Creative Connection in Mosman
By Tahney Fosdike
Jo Bertini – an award-winning Australian artist with a thirty-plus year portfolio of painting, education and writing – is known for her desert landscapes, people and animal paintings and drawings.
With plenty of local and international exhibitions, publications and residencies under her belt, her creative focus has always been constant: a love for remote and inaccessible desert regions around Australia and the world.
With her dedication to remote areas, you might be surprised to know that Jo Bertini can often be seen in the streets of Mosman – one of the places she calls home.
We caught up with the artist to learn how she observes and celebrates the beauty and creative community in the harbourside suburb.
Why are you based in Mosman? Do you have a local studio?
I work between my studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico, USA, and my property in rural central NSW where I have a heritage woolshed studio. I also have a room in my parents' house in Mosman that I use as a studio when I'm in Sydney for family.
Mosman is far removed from your desert subject matter. But it's a beautiful place: with views of the Harbour and Opera House and many beaches and parks. As an artist who observes the world, how do you connect with the suburb, creatively, in your daily life?
I love Mosman for those reasons. It's a rare phenomenon today to have so much preserved native bush and unpolluted beaches close to a city. Daily walks and swimming are conducive to my practice, putting me in the right mind space of reflection.
The undeveloped foreshore and national parks are also creatively stimulating, offering connection to the natural world as well as a sense of history and place that I need in the studio.
I often kayak into the ocean for a different perspective on the land, the geography and the beautiful remnant angophora forests. Mosman offers great privilege and an incredible lifestyle that we often take for granted.
You’re exhibiting twice this year with Mosman Art Gallery. The first show, 2025 Artists of Mosman 2088 (February 15 - March 16), celebrates Mosman as the home of artists for tens of thousands of years by surveying its current thriving artistic community. Can you tell me more about being involved in the local creative network?
Mosman has a long history of attracting artists since the earliest Traditional Custodians who left evidence like hand stencils and petroglyphs of whales, fish, kangaroos and ancestral beings carved into the sandstone foreshore. They also left traces of quarries for tool making and shell work in the recovered middens around the foreshore.
The later colonial artists and their camps were exclusively male, although many female artists were working and visiting the sites and camps in the area. The natural flora and fauna, as well as this deep historical artistic context, interest and inspire me.
The paintings I'm working on for the exhibition reflect this. They also reflect my longstanding interest in inserting a “female” version of place into the historically predominant male archive. Other women artists of Mosman, particularly my Mum (sculptor Anne Ferguson, who has public artworks around Mosman) inspire me. My mother has always been my major artistic mentor and influence.
Where will this year take you? What are your plans for 2025?
I'm currently working on a project with Traditional Custodians in the deserts of central Queensland and scientists from UQ. I will return to my home and studio in New Mexico – in their Spring – to continue to work on desert projects.
In June, I'm going to the only European desert (Andalusia, Spain) for a month-long artist residency and to work with an environmental organisation involved in projects concerning desert preservation, rehabilitation and biodiversity as well as cultural and Indigenous preservation.
I have other exhibitions, too, and feel I need to disappear into the studio. My “dance card” is full!
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