John Bartlett Biography.
Footscray,Vic.

John Bartlett has been a practising artist for 35 years, and has held 19 solo exhibitions and shown with 37 Group exhibitions. He is a self-taught painter, except for a short period with Leslie Sinclair at Montsalvat (tonalism), and most importantly, a period in the late 80s with Erica McGilchrist of Caulfield was crucial to his development.

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

John painted mainly figurative works until 1981 then worked on construction paintings utilizing Rank Xerox technology; i.e. extra large  Photocopies of computer circuit boards hand fitted into Masonite support.  Then came geometrical figurative abstraction with figures re-enacting real-life games as in  “The Games People Play” based on Video Games then followed Hip Hop and the Peoples Ballet of Rap and Break Dancing. Next came “The Still Point” a series of Impressions of Heaven meeting Earth in reflections of the sky and clouds on water. Following water came the earth in a series of Impressions of the Never Never incorporating the 1931 Lasseter expedition in search of Lasseter’s Gold Reef. Following all that came a series of computer generated images derived from the Spiral that led into the Korean Spiral and Hexagrams of the I-Ching, from which came the Ceremonial and Portal series.
The  I-Ching Hexagram, Ceremonial, also the Portal series are painted Encaustic on 1.2mm sheet  Aluminium  using raw pigments, virgin beeswax with dammar. The central H form in the Ceremonial image was used to develop the on-going series of the Variations on a Theme, again Encaustic.

February 2010.

Contact John Bartlett. 0402683753
WWW.johnbartlett.com.au
Visit John Bartlett’s  Blog: bartlettart.blogspot.com