INSPIRE: Stripey plays second fiddle as Wendy Binks’ Elephant Dreaming show finds joy in the Denmark landscape

Wendy Binks knew she’d made it when a child looking at her work called out to his mother: “Look, it’s Stripey!” Other emus are available, notably Edwin and Edwina, but Binks’ distinctive flightless fauna and his friends have travelled all over the globe from Binks’ birthplace in Denmark, and the good news is there’s another Stripey book being created right now. The even better news is that Stripey and some mates are in Binks’ home-town exhibition, titled Elephant Dreaming, at the Denmark Visitor Centre, though the focus is less on the boss-eyed, spikey-feathered character and more on the artist’s landscapes and seascapes in a departure from the subject matter which has made her famous. Now based in Fremantle, the opportunity to show her work in her native environment has provided Binks with a new challenge and a welcome return, with the centrepiece of the show being stunning works featuring Elephant Rocks, a natural phenomenon she has loved since childhood. “The emus are my bread and butter, but when I was offered the opportunity to do an exhibition at the visitor centre, it was a chance to show Elephant Rocks,” Binks said. “I always wanted to paint them but it’s hard to paint them in Denmark and sell the piece in Fremantle. “Also, I didn’t know at first how to paint them — it’s layers and layers of crystals and rocks; it’s so memorable. “When I grew up it was playing in the mud amongst karri trees, near the beach at William Bay, and that really shaped me — my childhood in that landscape. “Painting Elephant Rocks I started to remember all those feelings which were a huge part of my life. “The rocks still feel big to me — I went back down inside where I used to go as a child and it still felt the same. “They are so impressive, sleeping giants, a constant.” Also bursting with colour are her works featuring fish, parrots and tawny frogmouths, putting her eco credentials to the fore and Australia’s wonderful animals as her main focus of the exhibition. “I put in a couple of emus, just so people knew who I was,” she joked. Born on a Denmark dairy farm, which her parents now run as an alpaca tourist farm, Binks studied art and design at Curtin University, majoring in ceramics. Her love of animals — she would have been a biologist, she reckons, had she not turned to art — tempted her to start painting fauna on her pottery, and Stripey was born. Well, sort of, as the emu on her original pottery has undergone significant character development since then. “I’ve still got my very first plate from 30 years ago — over the years Stripey has become more colourful,” she said. “I couldn’t have put that original emu into a children’s book — he was too realistic and a bit daunting. “I had to work on getting the character right — there’s a lot of work in drawing, getting the eyes right especially.” She started drawing when she was just four years old. “I had a blessed childhood with my dad teaching me always to be curious and fostering my love of animals and birds,” she said. “I think everyone expected me to be an artist, which brought a fair bit of pressure, and I guess I felt I lost the freedom to choose. “But I worked in retail for a couple of years and I’m now so glad I am self-employed — I have a lot of freedom, and I appreciate my choice of career as it allows me to travel and work flexibly.” She is working on her next Stripey book at the moment. It’s Stripey’s 21st birthday and it will be heralded in the book In Your Dreams, which she hopes to publish before the end of the year. “I am the emu lady. “I remember someone asking if I thought it was a cop out, but it is simply making a living which frees me up to do things like the exhibition.” She knows her market and caters to it — but she is also happy to be showing her art at her childhood home where an audience will recognise the landscape as a vital living thing. Ideally, she would like anyone who sees her paintings of Elephant Rocks to go out and fall in love with the environment they dominate — having bought the artwork first, of course. Stripey is key and a fabulous creation, but Stripey is also the vehicle which allows Binks to celebrate her true love, the scenery and seascape, plus the happy memories of her home town. Elephant Dreaming is at the Denmark Visitor Centre until May 1.