HIDDEN FACES
The 2020 Victorian Salon des Refusés
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Cat #33 Lisa Wang
JOHNNY Oil on Linen 56 cm h x 86 cm w NFS Artist’s Statement John Mandich is dear friend and we all call him “Johnny”. People mainly know him as the bottle-shop manager at Evelyn Hotel in Fitzroy, but many don’t know that he is also a trained electrician, a guitar player in a band, a potter and a Harley motor bike rider. He is definitely a multi-talented man. However, to me he is a fellow painter, an artist. Johnny loves sketching and painting portraits and figures. It’s his 21st year of entering the Archibald Prize this year. Just amazing. So, I thought of painting him in a painting to celebrate such a great passionate friend. I visited Johnny’s new studio in Carlton, and loved his big table, full of different equipment, the old manual drill, the pottery jar he made full of brushes and the handy man’s screwdriver and pliers, paint tubes and medium bottles, and of course his trusty guitar besides him. I saw a painting in my mind straight away. To make the painting interesting, I tried to limit the light on his figure and emphasis contrast on his face, his tattooed arm and his hands. Even though it’s a portrait painting, all the elements on the table were just as exciting for me to paint. This portrait was submitted for the 2020 Archibald Prize. click on artwork to enlarge |