Artist John Pasquarelli

To describe John Pasquarelli as an individual is an understatement. He is an extraordinary one, this exhibition being but another example of his exceptional personality. Nowadays it is the habit for the young genius to be discovered at twenty and be burnt out at thirty. Pasquarelli waits till he is sixty-six to have his first solo show.

The explanation is simple. He has been painting for only eighteen months – with his usual drive and vigour. His style may be naïve; but the mind behind the brush is complex and driven by a spirit that has not waned over the years. Gambler, opal miner, crocodile hunter, Sepik River trader and art dealer, politician, notorious speech writer, author, publican and maker of mayhem are among his many previous activities.

Something, however, has changed as expressed in the reflective theme that runs through this exhibition, together with a newly discovered sense of history and his place in it. Pasquarelli, in the countryside around Newstead in Central Victoria, has found evidence from a past that links him and his forebears to this ‘new land’. Although Pasquarelli was born in Brisbane and grew up in Colac and Melbourne, his father had come from Conzano in Northern Italy. Looking at many of the timber and stone structures still surviving in Central Victoria, where he now lives, Pasquarelli discovered that they had been built by northern Italians from Ticino on the Italian-Swiss border. The affinity inspired him to paint.

The passion of Pasquarelli’s interest is shown in his choice of subjects and the detailed identification he has written on each label attached to the back of his paintings – ‘Disused sandstone stables circa 1860s on Vince Gervasoni’s farm near Yandoit, Victoria, Australia’ and ‘Mud brick and fired brick ruins – Gamboni homestead (Gamboni was a charcoal burner) – circa 1860s – near the old Newstead racetrack – Loddon river in background, Newstead, Victoria, Australia’. They have a kind of topographical exactness of location about them, even to the extent of including the name of the state and country. It is the colonial view of achievement in reverse, seen from the present looking back rather than the nineteenth century detailed description painted for sending ‘home’ to curious family and friends.

With his Italian background, there is no surprise that Pasquarelli should find much to interest him in architectural ruins - of the antipodes. His favoured format is the semi-isolated building or ruin set in the landscape as typified by McLay Homestead, Newstead-Maryborough Road. This is a fascinating work, for not only is it Pasquarelli’s first painting, it also shows a degree of technical sophistication achieved by skilful reworking. The blue stone building, proudly inscribed ‘J. McLay 1865’, is derelict, windows have gone and the iron roof is rusting. It is set in an open field of heavily textured yellow grasses, the closed gate carrying the sign – ‘Trespassers Prosecuted/ Keep Out’ – somehow very redolent of Pasquarelli. The sign in The Old Stone House states bluntly ‘Piss Off’, a phrase not unknown to the artist.

Another idiosyncratic touch is his motif of the magpie – a cheeky bird - sitting on a chimney stack, in the open doorway, or out on a bit of a limb, in this case a protruding piece of an old building. Pasquarelli’s images of old buildings in golden landscapes are bold, and show an interesting tug-of-war between the two and the three-dimensional, with a commanding sense of the tactile. He also ventures in to town in several works, Majorca Store of AD 1866 bearing in large letters the sinister touch of the faded word ‘WITCH’ across its side brick wall.

Pasquarelli’s art reveals a love of the materials used in these old buildings, so richly textured that the heavy impasto at times takes on an imagery of its own. It also shows a surprising liking for order in the frieze-like presentation of popular and other trees in the landscape of Gamboni’s Farm near Old Newstead Race Track or grazing sheep across the paddocks of Sandstone Ruins on Newstead-Ballarat Road. The real surprise in the exhibition, however, is Magpie Chicks, or as titled on the back: ‘Magpie chicks in Elm tree outside John Pasquarelli’s house at Newstead…’ Totally different from all the other paintings, Magpie Chicks not only has a striking composition, but also opens up intriguing possibilities for future development. Incredibly, he has introduced gently lyrical moments through the nest full of baby birds and the first touches of spring as the elm tree begins to leaf. Most of the picture area is taken up with the pitched iron roof, with its intruding modern appendages of television aerial and dish, the carefully defined shadow suggesting an awareness of pictorial intensity that could add a new depth to his painting.

Out of the ‘Sturm und Drang’ of Pasquarelli’s past a new and worthwhile field of endeavour has emerged. His paintings are striking and have the authority of a genuinely individual vision. Their mood is positive, as is his future as an artist.

Click Here to view an interview with John on Channel Nine's Sunday Program from 01 June 2008.