Tassie artist and author Jen Cossins finds her calling
Tasmanian writer and illustrator Jen Cossins raced on to the international stage when film star Anne Hathaway mentioned she loved her first book. HER NEW BOOK >>
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Author and illustrator Jen Cossins was thrust into the global spotlight three years ago when Oscar-winning actor Anne Hathaway raved about her book on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, to an audience of millions.
And while Cossins’s profile has continued to grow since the unexpected celebrity shout-out — with her new Book of Curious Birds now on sale — the 44-year-old Tasmanian reveals she never expected to make a living out of drawing and initially had her sights set on a sporting career instead.
Cossins grew up in Devonport and had aspirations to become an Olympic swimmer. But at 16 she contracted glandular fever, which became increasingly debilitating.
“I got glandular fever and that morphed into chronic fatigue syndrome so I was sick for many years,’’ Cossins recalls.
“I had a long, slow recovery and, like a lot of people, any kind of physical activity would set me back.”
She turned to drawing for both distraction and comfort, and discovered a passion that would eventually lead her to become an author and illustrator. “I’d always liked it, art was always one of my favourite subjects at school,” Cossins says.
“But I never really took it that seriously, I never thought I was that good at it. And I never considered it could be a career, it was just a fun, relaxing hobby.”
She enrolled at art school in Hobart but her illness made studying impossible. “I ended up dropping out because I wasn’t well enough,” Cossins says. “I only did six month there … it was quite unsustainable.”
When she started to feel better, Cossins decided to go travelling instead of returning to art studies. And when she eventually returned to Tasmania she decided it was time to “get serious” and she enrolled to study political science.
“While I still liked drawing, I still didn’t consider it a viable career option,” Cossins says.
But she soon realised that it was art, rather than political science, that she was most passionate about. “After uni, I spent several years working in jobs that I hated,” Cossins says.
“And around the time I turned 30 I had one of those moments where I realised I hated my job and my long-term relationship ended and everything was looking a bit bleak so I tried to do something different. I’d always had this love of art and decided to have a crack, basically.”
She founded her Red Parka market stall in 2008, sharing her animal-inspired prints with shoppers at Salamanca Market.
She spent years going back and forth between Hobart and Melbourne, still working part-time in other jobs, before settling in Hobart where she started off with a pop-up store in Harrington St for about six months. Then, as her art business grew, she eventually opened her Red Parka shopfront, in Criterion St, in 2015. She now sells prints, cards, children’s books and homewares alongside creations from other local, independent artists.
Cossins says the turning point for the business was her animal series based around collective nouns.
“I started just doing them as prints,’’ she explains.
“I did a handful because I liked words. And they quickly became the most popular series of artworks I’d ever done. It made me think ‘this would make a good book’ so I crowdfunded the publication of my first book and self published it.
“That was the turning point where things suddenly started to fall into place.”
That self-published book, released in 2013, was A Compendium of Collective Nouns — the same book that eventually captured the attention of Anne Hathaway. The book contained 50 illustrations, but was later expanded with a second volume, and together they were republished in 2017 by Lothian Children’s Books and became 101 Collective Nouns.
Cossins had been posting the book to her website’s Australian and international customer base for years. But then when the book was mentioned on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, sales went crazy. “For about two weeks it was insane,” says Cossins, who sent copies of the book to Hathaway and DeGeneres as a thank you. A few independent bookstores had stocked her book until then, but suddenly all the major players wanted to sell it.
Cossins says business has remained steady since then.
“Obviously the initial rush has died down,’’ she says. “But I still get people mentioning it, it has really stuck in people’s minds. It got my name out there, that’s the main thing, and now when I do a book people know who I am.
“It was incredibly random,’’ Cossins adds of the unexpected publicity. “But it indicates that [Hathaway] actually really liked the book.’’
Cossins’s new Book of Curious Birds features 28 beautiful and fascinating birds and is the culmination of countless hours trawling Google, Pinterest and bird enthusiast websites, looking for weird and wonderful birds to include. Like the hooded pitohui, found in New Guinea, which is actually poisonous.
“This has been a book that has been in my head for years,’’ Cossins reveals. “Mainly because birds are my favourite animals to draw and there are so many weird birds out there and so many crazy facts out there that surprise me.
“There are birds in this book [like the hooded pitohui] that I didn’t know of before I started researching.’’
Cossins is not entirely sure why birds hold such a special place in her heart, but she has become increasingly interested in including them in her work.
“I’ve always liked birds along with all animals since I was a child,’’ Cossins says. “And as my art has developed, my fascination with birds has grown.
“I just love drawing them … they’ve got feathers, there are lots of cool colours and quirky details, they are really interesting subjects to draw.’’
Cossins draws from her home studio in Lutana when she’s not working at Red Parka a couple of days a week and is already working on her next book called Amazing Animal Journeys about migration. “It's kind of the perfect book for me, as there are a lot of quirky facts and artistically it’s a good opportunity to draw some animals en masse,’’ she says.
Cossins is pleased she found her calling as an artist, even if it did take her a while to get there.
“There’s a lot of pressure to go to uni, get a good job, get married, have kids and be sensible,’’ she says. “But all attempts to take the sensible path left me quite miserable. It wasn’t until a series of life challenges came at me, that I thought ‘Why am I pursuing something that’s not making me happy?’.
“Pursuing art is the best decision I ever made. There’s nothing quite like being 100 per cent in control of your own destiny.’’
Book of Curious Birds
by Jennifer Cossins, $26.99, is out now
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