I’ve been drawing since I was a kid on a farm, going on to study Product Design and Transportation/Car/Mobility Design. I was born in Bendigo in 1963. In the 1960’s the VIC/WA Government offered the opportunity for Victorians to pioneer virgin land in the South of WA, Munglinup. I turned one year old crossing the unsealed Nullarbor in our old Fargo truck, together with Mum, Dad, and my older brother then five. Life was tough but exhilarating as a Munglinup pioneer, arriving without, for many years, electricity, running water, telephone, or sealed roads with nearest neighbors miles away, Esperance the nearest town was 2 hour by car. I grew up helping on the farm, kicking the footy around, and naturally gravitated to drawing for entertainment.
After High School in Esperance I went to Perth to study Product/Industrial Design, and a few years later specializing in Transportation Design in Europe and US. During study I did 2 internships with Renault in Paris, and Ford in Broadmeadows/Vic.
After design college I joined Honda R&D in Japan, and worked and grew family for the next 33 years in Tokyo. After Covid I took early retirement to come back to Melbourne my birth state and join my relatives, most of whom I had hardly known.
Although I have been drawing all my life, I have only just taken up painting the last year and a half. Design work was divided by freehand marker/chalk sketching, and then with the introduction of the computer, Photoshop digital/drawing with E-pencil on screen. In late 2023 I joined an acrylic painting group in Dromana/Mornington run by Carole Foster to get a feel for painting in acrylics. I also want to learn to paint in oils, and I did a 5 week oil painting course at VAS.
As a result of a 3D design background, my painting technique is naturally realistic and detailed with close areas in focus and background fading off, as the eye naturally sees. I’m trying to loosen up. My painting technique is a work in progress…
WA Institute of Technology W.A.I.T ( now Curtin Uni) BS Industrial Design 1980-83
Art Center College of Design Europe/Swiss. BA Transportation Design 1987-90
Art Center College of Design Pasadena LA. BA Transportation Design 1989.
WORK
Internship Renault Design, Paris 1988
Internship Ford Design, Broadmeadows Vic 1989
Honda R&D Tokyo, 1990-2023
AWARDS
QE11 Silver Jubilee Trust for Young Australians, to study in Europe 1987
Scholarship to attend Art Center College of Design
Graduation With Distinction from Art Center College of Design
WHEELS Magazine Interview
James Deane Honda Designer- Australian leads Honda’s outside the box car design
We would like to pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land on which our building stands, their leaders, past, present and emerging.