PAINTER’S STROKE OF GENIUS
From engineer to full-time artist
WHEN it comes to art, John Maitland’s imagination sets him apart.
The figurative expressive artist has been painting professionally for 15 years, but does things a little unconventionally.
When he was 15, he was offered a scholarship to an art school, but decided to pursue a career in engineering instead.
He doesn’t paint from photos, preferring to leave most of it up to his imagination. And he uses organic matter from his garden, which he presses into his mix of acrylic and oil paints.
“Fact is stranger than fiction,” Mr Maitland said. “The inspiration I get for my work is from, in part, my family. I have a lot of children.“
When he worked for a large multinational company, Mr Maitland travelled across regional Australia meeting indigenous people. It inspired him to paint them, too. “Indigenous people have coloured my work
quite considerably,” said Mr Maitland, whose works go for thousands of dollars.
“I just mirror what I see (but) I want to get to the very soul and essence (of them).”
Mr Maitland said he often observed his children and how they interacted with others before putting paint to canvas.
An English native, Mr Maitland came to Australia with his wife Dolores more than 20 years ago and settled on the Gold Coast.
It was Dolores who pushed him to paint full-time. “Her motivation was ‘get out there and do it’. I love it, there’s no other words for it.”
Mr Maitland said he “rarely worked from photographs”, preferring to simply “absorb” the person’s features.
He said he had paintings in four galleries in Australia as well as one in England. His latest series, Watergardens, focuses on indigenous people and is in the Left Bank Gallery, Southport, until September 22.
“We’re really proud to be hosting an artist of John’s calibre,” gallery curator Milly Reynolds said. “His new series is important work.”