Meet The Founder – Jess Mcdonald – HIGH TEES AUSTRALIA

💥Have had the absolute pleasure of working with Jess for a few years and constantly in awe of the amazing work she does in Melbourne’s West, supporting great causes such as Climate Change, West Welcome Wagon, Women’s Business Empowerment and more recently the High Tees Artist in Residency program

MEET THE FOUNDER of @highteesaustralia – Jess McDonald

I came back from maternity leave in January 2018 and started working on my business consultancy, Agents of Innovation. As part of getting back into work, I created a faux business to practice using all my business tools. This faux business was a basic t-shirt company.

So I went back to the drawing board – literally. Although having studied art at University, I had not picked up a pencil, paintbrush or marker for years having been too busy with my retail career. But now with the evenings quiet with my baby asleep, I started drawing again. I have always had a fascination with portraiture and black and white art. My biggest influences being Chuck Close, Gerhard Richter, Ansel Adams, Masashi Kishimoto, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Helmut Newton, David LaChapelle, Ellen Von Unwerth.

Why do I focus on Australian Icons? I believe there are many iconic and heroic Australians and Kiwis and their portraits are celebrations of who the people are and what they stand for. It still gives the wearer a chance to make a statement. Clearly if you wear Julian Burnside or Geoffrey Robertson, you are saying to the world that you stand for human rights and equality. Similarly if you wear Germaine Greer, you are showing the world you support feminism.

I spend a long time researching each person. And the first “album” of people are significant to me. Some people have changed over their lifetime but I capture the person in the moment I feel they were making the biggest impact and at the moment I was inspired by them.

😍Thanks for reading : It’s your turn to tag a Local Aussie Biz in the comments —

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