Ep 112: Jo Bertini

Talking with Painters

Jo Bertini’s recent exhibition at Sydney’s Arthouse Gallery, ‘Songs of Dry Hills’, alluringly portrayed the landscape she is drawn to repeatedly – the desert.

Her love of that landscape and its First Nations People has led her to spend months at a time not only in the deserts of Australia but also those of India and the US. She has built an intimate connection to these lands and their people through thousands of hours of drawing and painting directly from her subjects.

The paintings in her recent show were big and bold, but it wasn’t just the scale that caught your attention. Standing in front of the works the viewer was drawn into an other-worldly landscape where earth colours are replaced with a kaleidoscope of hues including accents of shining iridescent paint.

Jo has been exhibiting for over 30 years, in hundreds of solo and group shows, and her work is held in private and public collections across the world.

She is also an acclaimed portraitist with work in the National Portrait gallery, as well as an art educator, lecturer and writer.

Jo comes from a family of well known painters and photographers including the modernist photographer Olive Cotton and her mother, the sculptor Anne Ferguson, has been her greatest mentor.

To hear the conversation press ‘play’ beneath the above photo.

I also filmed Jo in her studio in Sydney – her larger studios are in country NSW and in New Mexico, USA, where she has lived for the past 5 years. See below for videos from the Talking with Painters YouTube channel .

Upcoming show

Solo exhibition at GOCA, University of Colorado, April to August 2022

Links to things we talked about in the show

• Website of Jo Bertini
• Jo Bertini at Arthouse Gallery
• Australian Desert Expeditions
• ‘Fieldwork’, book of Bertini’s drawings and gouache paintings

‘Dry Wash’, oil on French polyester canvas, 124.5 x 154.5cm

‘Desert garden in the land of enchantment’, oil on French polyester canvas, 155.5 x 155cm

‘Casting a Wish Beneath the River’, oil on Belgian linen, 201 x 155cm

‘Hidden River of Sand’, oil on Belgian linen, 202.5 x 206.5cm

Kitty Kantilla and Freda Warlapinni at Milikapiti (Snake Bay), 2003, oil on canvas, 152 x 135cm
Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Australia

‘Lachuben Rabari – Old and New’, 2016, oil on canvas on vintage woven wedding shawl 130 x 92 cm

‘Sand Sky’, oil on French polyester canvas, 93.5 x 135cm

‘The Language of Wind’, iridescent pigment and oil on French polyester canvas, 99.5 x 175.5cm

Selection of pencil, charcoal and gouache sketches from ‘Fieldwork’, published by Zabriskie Books, 2014