Jenny Janes Armati, painter, was born in Northampton, England in 1945, the daughter of Alan Arthur Janes, an engineer, and Ruby Eileen, née Bellingham, who was later to become a jeweller and silversmith in Blackheath, London.
Janes grew up in south east London. From an early age she was drawn to the arts. In the early 1960s she became a visual merchandiser in Regent Street, before joining the newly created Chelsea Girl, where she travelled the country opening new stores and training others to create her special retail look.
In the early 1970s she undertook a long cross country journey from England to Australia, originally working as photographic fashion stylist for David Jones in Sydney before returning briefly to the UK and Chelsea Girl.
Australia drew her back. This time she settled in Perth, again working as a visual merchandiser and then as fashion coordinator for the family-owned upmarket department store Aherns, later taken over by David Jones.
In the early 1980s Janes met and married Douglas Armati. She became a consultant, photographic stylist and journalist, as fashion editor of Girl About Town and homes editor of About Homes, before becoming the Food and Homes Editor for the Western Mail newspaper, then The West Australian, where she remained for over a decade until the early 1990s.
During the 80s Janes Armati had a career in food, creating the food, styling the photos and writing the copy for her food column and as chef in her own restaurants (The Kiosk and Jenny Janes), then in chilled and frozen food manufacturing and fresh food retailing.
Late in the 1980s she created a range of photographic greeting cards (initially with long time colleague Michael Hemmings, then on her own) which were licensed to Images & Editions in the UK for global distribution.
In the early 1990s Janes Armati moved with Douglas to France, where her brother, the boat builder and metal furniture artist, Robert (Syd) Janes, was based. She continued her food career and began painting backgrounds for her food photos and images of food and vignette images of villages in the Alpes Maritimes. She found an immediate audience.
In the mid-1990s she moved back to England, living on the Suffolk coast, initially in Aldeburgh, then Woodbridge. Here she continued to paint, sculpt and exhibit.
In the late 1990s her husband’s career took him to California and it was here that Janes Armati was struck by the infinite possibilities of abstract expressionism. She began painting more prolifically than ever and her work was in significant demand both there and in the UK, where she and Douglas maintained a home.
In the early 2000s Janes Armati returned to live in Woodbridge, before again being drawn back to Australia where she has since lived.
For almost a decade she lived and worked in Darlington, in the hills east of Perth, close to artists there like Robert Juniper, Nigel Hewitt, Richard Woldendorp, Ben Joel, Katrina Virgona, Mark Alderson and others. She held several exhibitions during this period.
In 2013 she moved to Melbourne, then on to Hobart, where her practice is now based.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2013
- Last updated:
- 2013
