Jimmi’s gutsy move to follow art dream

With a possum crawling out of ceiling tiles and a bird who leaves its droppings on the light switches, Lyndoch Living is being overrun by nature of the artistic kind thanks to Warrnambool’s Jimmi Buscombe.

After starting out the year questioning where his craft fit within the art world, Jimmi and his artwork have found a heartwarming purpose.

Two days a week he has been engaged by Lyndoch to paint Australian wildlife on the walls, ceiling and even light switches – all while he has an audience of elderly residents. And Jimmi is always up for a chat with those who come to watch him at work.

When CEO Doreen Power saw the interaction between Jimmi and the residents, she offered him an indefinite position to keep doing what he does best, paint and interact with the residents.

“They like quirky things here,” he said referring to the wren he painted on top of a light switch one day followed by the “bird poo” the next day. “Sure enough I had a cleaner who went to clean it,” Doreen said.

She said the project could be the first of its kind in aged care. “I’m very passionate about it. My residents love him too. The buzz around the place is really amazing,” she said.

Cath Porter, Doreen’s operations manager, came up with the concept after seeing the wombat painting on the railway overpass that was made famous by Emily Blissland’s ABC viral video of Jimmi, his wombat and the antics of his neighbour Phil Hoye. 

The video has been viewed 34.4 million times at last count, which probably makes Jimmi one of the most famous people in Australia right now. “Early on it was extraordinary,” Jimmi said.

Expecting the video to only be viewed a few thousand times at the most, but it only took a few hours to reach thousands and by the next morning hundreds of thousands. 

“Then it kind of went up a million a day, now it’s a million every couple of days,” he said. “I’ve had messages from all over the world.

“I had a message from a graffiti artist in the United States wondering what the clear coating was which is pretty funny”

“That part of it’s surreal. I saw it as internet fame. It disappears as quickly as it comes.”

He said the reaction from locals had been heartwarming with people coming up to chat and thank him for his artwork.

“To have it go on the video and it explode and get messages from people everywhere, I feel like it’s really solidified where I feel my art belongs now,” he said. “I really think my art is for people who maybe don’t go to the gallery.”

Although he said he’d like to think some of his work is appropriate to be hung on the walls of the art gallery – which is exactly where one of his portraits and some of his bird paintings are on display.

Since the wombat, affectionately called Gutsy (because Phil Hoye says in the video ‘that’s gutsy as Jimmi’), went viral, Jimmi has had lots of work requests and is booked solid for two or three months.

But for the next two or three weeks you will find Jimmi at Werribee Zoo where he has been commissioned to paint trompe l'oeil-style murals of their African cats and cheetahs.

The 3D murals are just one part of his work at the zoo, interacting with the visitors over the busy school holidays is the other. “I love that aspect,” he said.

With all that’s happened to Jimmi this year it is hard to imagine that just over two years ago he considered walking away from his art altogether.

After studying art at tafe and uni before working in Ikea’s decorator department as a signwriter, which is where he painted some of his first murals, he ended up working as a chef. 

“I never looked back and kept cooking. That became my creative output,” he said.

“That was also my connection to people. For me food’s about conversation and getting around the table, not that you get to do that as a chef, but at least you’re giving that to people.”

After meeting his wife and moving to Warrnambool, he worked as head chef at Bojangles before he ended up becoming a stay-at-home dad a year after his daughter was born.

“She was born three-and a half months premature. She was one pound 15. She was tiny. We got our girl home the day after her due date,” he said.

He eventually went back to work as a chef at Brightbird Espresso but ended up quitting in 2016 to pursue a career in art – something his wife Sheridan had to convince him to do.

Jimmi said his wife didn’t even know he could draw until he started doing drawings for his daughter on the chalkboard wall that he had painted on the side of the steps inside his house. 

After doing a pet portrait for a friend, orders for others started to flow and before long he was trying to balance doing a couple a week while working full -time as a chef.

Something had to give, and Jimmi had decided to give up the portraits but during a six-hour road trip to a friend’s wedding his wife told him to give up his chef’s job.

“I argued and argued for four-and-a-half hours and luckily she won,” he said. “I feel so lucky. People say don’t give up your day job.”

The transition to being a full-time artist was a risk. With six pet portraits to do, Jimmi thought that if he could just do a few a week he’d be right. “I did those six and then crickets, there was nothing,” he said.

That’s when he started to focus on his own artwork, coming up with his bird series which features a kingfisher he calls Dive Deep, symbolising Jimmi’s plunge into art.

“It became this semi-passive income and then the pet portraits slowly built,” he said.

After two years in the studio he decided he wanted to get among Warrnambool’s vibrant arts community and entered the 2017 Warrnibald art prize just hoping to get his work hung in a gallery. He ended up winning first prize.

Then came the Black Cockatoo in a Warrnambool laneway and in April Gutsy the wombat, which was just meant to be a temporary chalk drawing until Phil Hoye painted over it with a clear paint making it a permanent fixture.

“The artwork was never meant to stay up. I didn’t do it with all the passion. It was literally an experiment with chalk,” he said. 

“It’s really funny that the thing I’m probably least proud of as far as technically is the thing people recognise.

“I did a pair of gallahs on the couch at Lyndoch and it took me 20 hours and the wombat I did in two hours because no one was really going to see it and bloody Phil Hoye made sure that everyone would see it.”

The pair are now good mates and have appeared on radio, TV and even had a visit from senator Derryn Hinch since the video went viral.

But it is his work at Lyndoch that has cemented for Jimmi what art can achieve.

"I sometimes have 14 residents sitting behind me all chatting to each other or to me," he said.

“There’s healing and connection to community. It’s a beautiful thing.

“It’s just given my art so much more meaning for me as well.

“It really is that warm fuzzy feeling."

Jimmi and Doreen have been invited to talk about Lyndoch’s unique project at an arts and health conference in Port Macquarie in November.