Lasseter Dreaming on Camel 91cm x121cm	Lasseter with Camel 120cm x120cm	Desert of the Yams 130cm x130cm	Eldorado Found 130cm x190cm

Photo by David Johns, Melbourne

John Bartlett
Visual Artist (Indented Head, VIC)

John Bartlett has been practising art for 33 years, and has held 14 solo exhibitions and 32 group exhibitions. He is a self-taught painter, except for a short period with Leslie Sinclair at Monsalvat (tonalism), and most importantly, a period in the late 80's with Erica McGilchrist of Caulfield was crictical to his development.

John spent his early formative years in Melbourne and Riverina and has travelled extensively throughout through the Mediterranean, Aegean, Middle East and Europe.

John painted mainly figurative works until 1981 then worked on construction paintings utilizing Rank Xerox technology - photocopies with fitted computer circuit boards. He then moved onto geometrical figurative abstraction with figures re-enacting real-life games based on Video Games, then Hip Hop and the Peoples Ballet of Rap and Break Dancing.

From 1991 till 2002 his work featured impressions of sky reflections on water, then impressions of the land of Central Australia incorporating found-on-earth objects such as leaves, pods, twigs, etc and actual earth and sand from the Alice Springs district.

His current imagergy was developed with charcoal as drawings then completed on fabric wth paints.

Contact John Bartlett
Visit John Bartlett's website

Artists Statement:
A conundrum of art practice is the tension between the planned and the spontaneous. Considerations of an intellectual nature vie with intuition, impulse, immediate and direct mark-making similar to Sume-e; I spontaneously brush in an image and when the dust has settled ignore changes prompted by rules and conventions, changes that will tidy the untidy and tame the primitive in concern for polish and refinement.

When should we intrude into a stream of consciousness? Only the artist can decide that; the artist should be true to principles, have an open mind, be resolute in bearing the burden of making art, be prepared to swim against the current seeking beauty and truth in the mundane, the imperfect, interstices and the ordinary.

Art is not to be explained, it is to be lived with; to be an “itch”.