Artist John Pasquarelli

To describe John Pasquarelli as an individual is an understatement. He is an extraordinary one with an 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.

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