John Wolseley

b. 1938

John Wolseley's work over the last 45 years has been a search to discover how we dwell and move within landscape. He has lived and worked all over the continent from the mountains of Tasmania to the floodplains of Arnhem land.  He sees himself as a hybrid mix of artist and scientist; one who tries to relate the minutiae of the natural world - leaf, feather and beetle wing to the abstract dimensions of the earth's dynamic systems.  Using techniques of watercolour, collage, frottage, nature printing and other methods of direct physical or kinetic contact he is finding ways of collaborating with the actual plants, birds, trees, rocks and earth of a particular place.

He likes to think that the large works on paper on which he assembles these different drawing methods as representing a kind of inventory or document about the state of the earth.  He wants to reveal both the power and beauty of it, as well as show its condition of critical even terminal change.  His interest is to paint the processes and energy fields of the living systems of this land - flocks of birds, or water plants in swamps, or the movement of sand dunes.

Over 12 years he spent a lot of time in the company of the great Yolngu artist Mulkun Wirrpanda painting the floodplains and flora of of North East Arnhem Land.  In 2017, the results of this collaboration were exhibited at the National Museum of Australia as Midawarr Harvest: The Art of Mulkun Wirrpanda and John Wolseley and formed the basis of a book of the same name. 

Over the last three years he has been documenting and painting the habitat and modes of dwelling of mammals, birds and reptiles around his home in the forests of Victoria, and in the deserts of the North. Each June, he has taken his camping truck to the Northern Territory and documented the epic restoration and return of endangered animals to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s vast reserves at Watikinpirri/Newhaven.

In this ongoing series he has concentrated on how particular plants and animals actually dwell within the earth. These works have formed the basis of several exhibitions including NGURRA - Dwelling of desert animals (2025) and Animal Architecture (2026).  In these paintings he reveals the extraordinary complexity and ingenuity of these architectures of dwelling - the mounds, burrows, warrens, lairs and nests. 

Another recent project has been the exploration of the ephemeral rivers of the Wimmera. Focusing on the Banyena/Richardson river and often in company with fellow artists, Ray Arnold and Ian Westacott, he has been immersing himself in a world of sunken waterways, woven branches, duckweed and webs of Mycorrhizal fungus.