People often ask me where my ideas come from. The honest answer is: I sit in silence, or simply go outside.
Yeppoon sits on the edge of the Capricorn Coast, where the Great Barrier Reef begins and the hinterland rolls down to meet the sea. It's a place of extraordinary light, the kind that shifts from gold to violet in the space of twenty minutes at dusk. Living and working here means I'm never short of inspiration. The harder challenge is choosing what to paint.
The Landscape as Collaborator
I think of the natural world around me less as a subject and more as a collaborator. The Singing Ship in Emu Park, the pandanus palms along the foreshore, the way a storm builds over the Keppel Islands, these aren't just pretty scenes. They carry emotional weight. They have moods. And those moods find their way into the work.
When I'm preparing a new series, I spend time outdoors first, sketching, photographing, or simply sitting and watching. I'm looking for the feeling of a place, not just its appearance.
Creatures of the Coast
The wildlife of Central Queensland is a constant presence in my work. Dragonflies, Red Tail Black Cockatoo, turtles, these creatures carry symbolic weight across many cultures, and they carry personal meaning for me too. A dragonfly hovering over still water is a study in transformation or recarnation. . A heron standing motionless in the shallows is pure patience. I try to bring that quality of attention to the prints.
Colour and Light
The colour palette of the Capricorn Coast is unlike anywhere else I've lived. The water shifts from deep teal to turquoise to almost white in the shallows. The sky at storm time turns a particular shade of bruised purple that I've been trying to capture for years.
These colours show up in my work, sometimes literally, sometimes as an emotional undertone that's harder to name.
Explore prints inspired by the Capricorn Coast → https://www.jetjames.com/collections/landscapes
