TIMOTHY JOHN

 

Australian contemporary visual artist, Timothy John has been exhibiting professionally since 1979.

He has shown in some of Australia's finest commercial galleries, with the occasional 'sojourn' onto the international scene.

‘Discovered’ by leading Australian art entrepreneur, collector and gallerist, Kim Bonython, in the late 70’s, John has gone on to be a respected member of the Australian art scene, with contributions on a local and national level.

John's oeuvre encompasses the subtlety of the Australian landscape's transient moods, from the vibrancy of the vast expansive emptiness of the interior, to the silent unfolding romantic and lyrical beauty of coastal scenes, he records his emotional response to the landscape with a 'layering' of aesthetic beauty and deep philosophical and intellectual resonance.

A self taught artist, he holds a Masters Degree in Visual Art, from the University of South Australia, which he attained after being invited to study in 1998.

He has work in many private and public collections throughout Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States of America.

 

 

REPRESENTATION

AUSTRALIA:

 

Maree Mizon Gallery, Sydney. BMG ART, South Australia. Perth Galleries, Western Australia and Art Galleries Schubert, Queensland.

DENMARK:

Gallerihuset, Copenhagen.

UNITED STATES:

The Hart Gallery, Palm Desert, Carmel

 

 

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

 

Barossa Regional Art Gallery, Commonwealth Bank Collection, Adelaide Bank Collection, Sheraton Hotels, Hyatt Hotel Group, F.H. Faulding Collection, Parliament House Canberra, Lauren Bacall Collection New York, Standard Chartered Banking, ATO Collection, Post Collection Netherlands, QANTAS AIRLINES Collection, Josephine and Eirven Knox Collection, Dubai and Philippines

 

 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

 

1984 Bonython Meadmore Gallery, Adelaide Australia

1986 Bonython Meadmore Gallery, Sydney Australia

1986 Solander Galleries, Canberra Australia

1987 Bonython Meadmore Gallery, Sydney Australia

1988 BMG Fine Art, Adelaide Australia

1989 BMG Fine Art, Sydney Australia

1990 BMG Fine Art, Adelaide Australia

1990 Perth Galleries, Perth Australia

1992 Keith Woodward Fine Art Dealer, Adelaide

     Australia

1993 Perth Galleries, Perth Australia

1995       Sym Choon Gallery, Adelaide Australia

1996       BMG ART, Adelaide Australia

1996       Perth Galleries, Perth Australia

1997       BMG ART, Adelaide Australia

1999       BMG ART, Adelaide Australia

1999       Bulle Galleries, Melbourne Australia

2000       BMG ART, Adelaide Australia

2003       BMG ART, Adelaide Australia

2004       Gallery New Quay, Melbourne

2004       Perth Galleries, Perth Australia

 

 

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

 

1980       Bonython Gallery, Adelaide Australia

1983       Bonython Gallery, Adelaide Australia

1987       Australian Galleries, Melbourne Australia

1988       Holdsworth Galleries, Sydney Australia

1988       Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane Australia

1989       Himeji Regional Gallery, Himeji Japan

1990       Lyall Burton Galleries, Melbourne

1991       Bathurst Regional Gallery, Bathurst Australia

1991       Lyall Burton Galleries, Melbourne

1991       Kensington Gallery, Adelaide Australia

1991       Aptoz Cruz Galleries, Adelaide Australia

1993       Stellar Graphics, Paris France

1993       Christopher Leonard Gallery New York

1994       Kensington Gallery, Adelaide Australia

1995       National Museum of Fine Art, Havana Cuba

1995       Fukuya Gallery, Hiroshima Japan

1997       DEXA Gallery, University of Panama

1997       Olsen Carr Art Dealers, Sydney Australia

1998       University of South Australia Art Museum

2001       Volvo Gallery, Sydney

2004       Art Galleries Schubert, Gold Coast, Queensland

2004       Gallery Philip Neville, Darwin, Northern Territory

2005       MAAS, Gallery New Quay, Melbourne

2005       Gallerihuset, Copenhagen Denmark

 

 

Relevant Training and Experience

 

1977       Began to explore painting, self taught.

1980       Invited to show at Bonython Gallery Adelaide.

1982-84  Worked alongside Australian artist John Olsen, exploring print making and painting techniques.

1984       Established own studio practice. Exhibiting career began in earnest, showing regularly throughout Australia. Traveled extensively throughout Europe. Lived in Barcelona, Spain for 7 months.

1993       First overseas exhibitions, at Stellar Graphics, Paris and the Christopher Leonard Gallery, New York.

1995       Studied bronze casting in workshop situ at South Australian School of Art.

1996       Traveled to U.S.A. following up exhibition opportunities in New York.

1997       Invited to study for Masters Degree in Visual Art at the University of South Australia.

1998       Graduated Master of Visual Art University of South Australia

1999       Awarded Fundacion Valparaiso [Spain] Studio grant 2000/2001

 

 

ARTIST STATEMENT:

ON LANDSCAPE WORKS

 

Most artists paint landscapes because they are ‘inspired’ by the beauty they are witness to.

Other artists find religious meanings in views of Nature and try to communicate this significance through their pictures.

Rather than re-creating a landscape, I aim to express its essence, and my emotional response to that essence.

My paintings are not snapshots or souvenirs of particular places, what I hope is that they present a recognizable image, and an illusion of space, combining distance with atmospheric softness, hopefully evoking a metaphysical stillness, and even more importantly, that they evoke a mood of meditation and quiet introspection.

I want the works, rather than being ‘site specific’ as such, to be work that has universality about it.

Many have said that my landscape inspired works are more commentaries on the beauty of nature emptied of intrusion, and that as real as they may seem, the landscapes are personal spaces that have a resonance of spirit.

Especially fascinating to me at the present are the horizon and shore, and where land, sea, and sky come together. In a sense, these are expectant and hopeful places.

The horizon is a symbol of hope, and undiscovered possibilities, a symbol I find most appealing in these times of world uncertainty.

As Danish artist Caspar David Friedrich is quoted to have said:

"... the artist should paint not only what he sees before him but what he sees within him."

Obviously, no single work can hope to distil the complex spirit of a landscape, so, many times in order to capture this richness, I work in series, on a large number of paintings concurrently.

This allows me to transport strong elements and effective techniques from one piece to the next, with each rendering sharing some information with the other works in the series.

This overlap of elements enhances each individual expression and intensifies the cohesion within the body of work.

Ultimately, each piece depicts some element or ‘feeling’ of the landscape's influence, until the larger body of work coalesce to articulate what I hope to be its “truth”...or more accurately “my” truth.

As I get older, I feel an increase in elements of abstraction entering my works. Where there was once a discernable physical element of landscape, there is now a smudge, or a scrape or some other gesture that replaces it, allowing the viewer more freedom to interpret the piece in their own way.

This is a magical discovery for me, allowing myself a looseness of technique that enhances not only the physical act of painting, but also enriches the experience of the viewer.

I would like for people to find their own space in my work, a place of clarity and contentment.

 

 

ESSAY [excerpt]

ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING

 

 

Timothy John’s empathy with the understated natural beauty of landscape captures not only the artist’s strength as a colorist, but the balance between impression and expression – the seen and the felt – that underpins his aesthetic.

John understands well the way that these impulses merge:

“I do not try to portray the landscape in a strict physical sense, rather, I hope to capture its essence, the light, the color and the shapes before me, all of which guide me to create an emotional response”.

There is a spirituality that pervades each of his works. This spirituality is for John, engendered not simply by the sheer natural beauty of that place where sea, land, and sky meet, but by his realization that to create an object of beauty carries with it an inner conviction, as John puts it:

“to allow myself the luxury of beauty to exist for beauty’s sake”.

 

As Wassily Kandinsky during his pre-war Blaue Reiter period was wont to point out, to give oneself over to the pursuit of beauty at a time of social and political ugliness, when beauty is perhaps in short supply, carries rewards not just for the artist, but for those who would appreciate their art.

And like Kandinsky, there is a musicality about John’s work that transcends its expressive, formal and technical virtues – it is “Debussyesque” in the subtlety of its colorations and textures, yet “Stravinskyian” in its brooding and occasionally dark lyricism.

Like the panoramas that inspire him, John’s work rewards those who allow themselves a moment of quiet contemplation. But more than this, the works invite us, the audience, to reflect on the balance between seeing, feeling, and knowing, that which lies not only at the heart of all good art, but of ourselves.

 

Dr. Mark Carroll

 

 

Dr. Mark Carroll lectures at

The University of Adelaide, South Australia,

and is author of the acclaimed book

'Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe'

Cambridge University Press