Annemieke Mein

Who is Annemieke Mein?

Annemieke Mein is a Dutch-born Australian textile artist who specialises in depicting wildlife. She was the first textile artist to be member of Wildlife Art Society of Australasia and the Australian Guild of Realist Artists. The subjects of her sculpted textiles are birds, frogs, gum and wattle blossoms, and invertebrates such as moths, dragonflies, wasps and grasshoppers. Her fondness for insects and her sympathetic images, often greatly enlarged and showing normally invisible colours and textures, have revealed new aspects of the everyday world.

Annemieke was the only child of a father who was a dental technician and a mother who was a skilled dressmaker, and emigrated to Melbourne with her parents in 1956. Initially unable to speak English, she attended Brighton State School, Mitcham State School and Nunawading High School. She spent long days of her childhood roaming the outdoors and becoming fascinated by the extraordinary diversity of Australian wildlife. She sketched and collected insects, and learnt to breed and raise butterflies.