Jen Roberts BIO
Jen Roberts, the co-creator of IMOK, is a self-taught artist living in Sydney. She draws inspiration from a childhood filled with colouring, painting and building up treasured collections of badges, stickers and figurines. This, combined with a complete obsession with street art and character design, has led to her contribution to IMOK’s style — vibrant colour, frantic sketches, quirky characters that jump off the page, and most recently, digitally designed graphics.
The journey to IMOK has been an interesting one …
Excelling in Visual Arts in high school, yet not having the confidence to pursue it further, Jen undertook a Diploma of Hospitality Management which was completed with Distinction in 1999. A successful career in the hospitality industry followed, yet the passion to create was always bubbling away just below the surface.
The fateful meeting with Sandra Mason at that very course sparked a true friendship. What began with elaborate, hand-made birthday gifts for each other spurred on a mutual love of art and they began creating together. In the years that followed, Sandra moved to Melbourne but the friendship remained and has grown into the dynamic partnership that it is today. IMOK was born in 2004.
Since then, the IMOK team have transformed their designs into diverse art forms, including their highly original range of clothing, canvases, prints and IMOK Lettering.
The years that followed saw Jen and Sandra work hard to build a unique, highly distinctive style of art. Jen saw her dream of exhibiting as an artist come true in 2006. Exhibitions have followed each year since. In 2007, Jen was invited to work with Blake Education on one of a series of books called “On the Job – Fashion Designer”, and following on from that IMOK was invited to take part in a Designer Case Study that was published in the Instant Lessons series by Jennifer Gough in 2009.
Living in two different states has been one of many challenges that Jen and Sandra have faced, yet the constant emailing of sketches to each other helped develop the layered graphic style that remains their signature style today.
The future of IMOK is bright and the journey has really just begun. With their sights set on animation, toys and books, as well as an insatiable appetite to draw, paint and digitally create, the world will have to keep their eyes peeled to see what happens next!
