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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

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Jimmy and Jane Barnes

In their own words

Recorded 2022

Jimmy and Jane Barnes
Audio: 2 minutes

Jimmy Barnes: We have a beautiful garden at home and friends would give me roses. We don't want gifts.

Jane Barnes: Yeah, for your 60th, what happened was everybody brought a rose. So we created this …

Jimmy Barnes: Rose garden

Jane Barnes: … amazing rose garden.

Jimmy Barnes: Yeah we’ve got these beautiful roses that obviously are brought to us with love and every day I'd go and pick them, roses for Jane all through lockdown. And every day I'd pick a new bunch and say, look at this, isn't this great? And they smell beautiful. And that was sort of my way of reaching out to Jane every day and letting her know I loved her. And it was a simple thing. And I just loved the fact that these roses kept growing in our garden.

Jane Barnes: And you could pick a hundred of them.

Jesse Lizotte: Well, on the day you brought like wheelbarrows full, you came into the photo studio with just tonnes of roses.

Jimmy Barnes: It was beautiful.

Jesse Lizotte: Yeah, we had too many. It smelt great.

Jimmy Barnes: And that whole metaphor, there’s a portrait about love and the whole metaphor of the roses and things, you know love's not always easy …

Jane Barnes: A bed of roses.

Jimmy Barnes: … it's not always a bed of rose, it's not always easy …

Jane Barnes: Its full of thorns.

Jimmy Barnes: ... it takes work. And there's thorns, it's not always going to be great. But it's about living through that and sharing those experiences that makes love. You know, love takes work and love takes effort and love takes... you know, you have to give and take, you know. And I thought it was …

Jane Barnes: And adventures and wonderful things as well.

Jimmy Barnes: I thought it was a great metaphor with the roses. And particularly because they came from our garden. They were the roses that we've been sharing for the previous years, you know.

Audio transcript

Acknowledgements

This recording was made during interviews for the National Portrait Gallery's Portrait Stories series.

Related people

Jimmy Barnes AO

Jane Barnes

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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

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