Petra Rodgers

Petra is an Australian artist living in Ballarat, Victoria. She has worked as an artist for twenty-five years, graduating from RMIT university in 2002 with first class honours in painting. Petra has had ten solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows.

Thirteen years ago she made the decision to cease exhibiting for a while due to burnout and disillusionment. She continued her practice privately with the focus of discovering new ways to express herself. Petra has since re-entered the art scene with a renewed passion and direction gained from years of experimentation with different materials and an exploration into the work of outsider and folk artists. During the pandemic Petra

experimented with using coloured pencil on wood partly inspired by a Aldolf Wolfli drawing that he made on a wooden wardrobe. Instinctively she drew a jumper on a little

piece of Tasmanian oak that she had in her studio. The drawing reminded her of childhood experiences, sitting under fig and walnut trees in her backyard drawing on the side of a rusty chook shed. It was a revelation that has since sparked many coloured pencil drawings on plywood including the one submitted to the MePaintMe open call exhibition. The work is part of an ongoing drawing project inspired by her love of the

catalogues she collects and finds online. She is interested in creating a ‘catalogue of dreams’ searching for objects and images that are symbolic of her life experiences.