Adelaide-born artist Billie Justice Thomson is known for her nostalgic, joyful paintings depicting household items, food and drink. Rather than seeing these items as disposable or mundane, Billie recognises their cultural impact and portrays them using a ‘naive and slightly wonky style that is intentionally approachable and good-humoured.’

Each of Billie’s richly polished and saturated artworks is created by painting on the reverse side of perspex. ‘It’s really similar to a sign writer’s technique,’ she explains, ‘It’s all done with the black outline first, then the colour is filled in with several layers – sometimes up to five – to get a really flat, solid colour. That’s the main reason I started doing this technique – because I wanted really flat colour without any texture.’

Billie’s latest exhibition Big Show is showing at Modern Times in Fitzroy this month. The unifying theme of the works in this show – which include a baguette, an Artline permanent marker, and a bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce – is their size. ‘I really wanted them to have a human scale,’ Billie says. ‘I wanted them to be exactly my height, so they’re all 180cm. I wanted to stand next to them and for them to take on some of my personality.’

Another reason Billie created these oversized works was to challenge the traditional canvases painters normally work with. ‘There’s a really standard size that lots of paintings that go into homes are and I really wanted them to have a different relationship to the spaces,’ she says. ‘They take on a different quality that a standard painting doesn’t have.’

This is the second time Billie has exhibited at Modern Times and follows a big (pardon the pun) couple of years for the artist. Billie is now a full-time illustrator and painter whose work has been commissioned by Gourmet Traveller, Qantas, Frankie and Gorman, just to name a few!

Big Show by Billie Justice Thomson
Thursday, October 17th – Sunday, October 27th
Modern Times Gallery
311 Smith Street
Fitzroy, Victoria