John is an established artist and interprets the Australian landscape, capturing the subtleties of colour and light using a spontaneous technique in oil and acrylic. New works explore the rugged nature of the landscape using texture and a heightened palette. John’s paintings also aim to capture a quietness and sense of contemplation.
John completed his BA in Fine arts at the University of Witwatersrand - Johannesburg in 1974 has has exhibited both in Australia and South Africa. During the mid-eighties a time looking at and painting old fishing boats, captured that same sense of abandonment and questioning.
On arriving in Perth in 1986 was struck by the intense colour and light and worked on a series of extremely realistic beach scenes, incorporating people. Thereafter John worked on a series of window paintings using oils which culminated in a solo exhibition in 1997. These paintings explored windows as an intriguing foil to life, looking in and looking out. The series included some paintings looking at architecture and the landscape, focusing on Rottnest Island, Beverley and York.
In recent years John has interpreted both the Australian and European landscape, capturing the subtleties of colour and light using a spontaneous and increasingly spontaneous technique using pastels and oil. His paintings of the landscape capture a quietness and sense of contemplation.
“I have two key objectives with my work. Firstly to capture and explore the essence and subtleties of light; the way light defines both the way we see and respond to the world around us. Secondly, I endeavor to create a ‘painting’, not merely produce a scene. I am not trying to reproduce a slice of landscape but rather, to create an artwork that is a piece of reality itself.
The painting is constructed with paint and it is that paint that becomes the reality. The landscapes that I paint draw inspiration from the starting point. The end point is a painting that is its own reality. To an extent it is similar to what the French Impressionists did. In fact one painting by Manet (Portrait of Emile Zola) was criticized by an art critic because, ‘….the man’s trousers look as if they are made of paint’.”
— John Pearson
