A career in harm reduction nursing helps paint people in new light for Brisbane Portrait Prize finalist
Jane with her artwork of Dr Jeremy Hayllar, hanging in the State Library of Queensland.
After years working in drug and alcohol harm reduction, Biala Clinical Nurse Jane Booty admits that her role has changed the way she sees people.
Her long career working with vulnerable consumers has shown her the many aspects that make up an individual, with the experience informing the art she creates outside work – using to create a form of magical realism through her portraits that shows there’s more beneath the surface than the face on the canvas.
Jane always loved fine arts, but growing up in the 1970s she said that it wasn’t an option in her family – so she found herself studying nursing and psychology and ultimately working in drug and alcohol harm reduction.
It’s here she met Dr Jeremy Hayllar – her colleague of 20 years as Clinical Director of Metro North’s Alcohol and Drug Service – and the subject of her Brisbane Portrait Prize artwork, where she was recently named a finalist.
Jane and Jeremy spent decades working alongside each other until recently when Jeremy retired after a long and meaningful career helping many Queenslanders with addiction.
“Jeremy was one of my few colleagues who knew I painted, and he’s a photographer himself, so I asked him to sit for my piece especially because he was retiring,” Jane said.
“I wanted to do something to celebrate him. I also love the historic wall behind Biala where the painting is set, which was knocked down shortly after this piece was started, so it’s an important part of the work.”
It took Jane approximately six months to paint the portrait of her dear colleague, working on it only on Thursdays in her art studio, and clinically as a nurse during the rest of the week.
For Jane, the title as a finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize is amazing, but not at all the reason she creates art.
“I have drawn or painted consistently throughout my life since I was a young child – but I paint because it makes me happy, and a portrait is a bit like a puzzle, it’s a chance to present the whole person,” she said.
“Those who know Jeremy know he loves his bike, having ridden to work every day and between clinics to see his patients, so it was important to showcase him with his bike and honour him ahead of retirement.”
Jane’s portrait of Dr Hayllar “Between the Wall and the Way Forward” is currently hanging in the Brisbane Portrait Prize Finalist Exhibition in the State Library of Queensland.