John Hart

As an artist, my primary concern is the formal aspects of art, that is, the aesthetics of a painting; the techniques used to establish a sense of order within the painting. Concerns such as composition, perspective, colour, line, visual pathways, the grid, colour balance, variation of pattern and shape are the motivators for me to make art. Development of these features to a satisfying level is of the utmost importance to me. I do my best to avoid subjects that are “loaded”, subjects that have a strong idea or prejudice based in popular culture. I understand it would be impossible to produce any work of art that is free of meaning but I strive for an image that is a distillation, evocative of the subject but not the representation of it.   

Landscape is problematic for me. The subject, based on hundreds of years of tradition that strives to represent natural scenery, buildings and sometimes depict elements arranged into a coherent composition or expressive form of a time and place in history, leaves me with the challenge to find a way into this genre that has already been traversed by so many artists over so many centuries. Where do I go from here? What could I possibly add to the conversation that has not been covered before?  

The work I present in this exhibition is an exploration of landscape, drawing on digital samples of photographs taken of the flooding of Cooper Creek. They are painted to create a new image that is evocative of an actual time and place, a collection of memories.