Song to Pan

                                
Since resigning as the Cultural Development Officer B.M.C.C. in 1996, John Ellison has held an exhibition of paintings each year in the Mountains.
Now in his Katoomba studio, surrounded by fifty paintings completed in the last year, John is selecting work for his next show at the Nolan Gallery to be called Song to Pan.
“This morning I sat in Katoomba St outside the old Post Office – one of my favourite spots – and pretended that I was in Paris and had just come down from the room above. A lovely spring morning, the air seemed full of possibilities. I watched all the passersby intently, to see how people behaved in this strange exotic location”.
During the winter months John has painted many interiors; however there are a number of familiar street-scapes in the collection as well. One of the paintings shows the poet Walt Whitman having a drink with John in a local bar. Most of the work is an enthusiastic tribute to the artists he most admires: Matisse, Van Gogh and Bonnard. In past exhibitions and in his workshops on creativity, Ellison has long held that art has a redemptive quality, much needed in times of chaos and despair.
“This morning I thought of Matisse who, during the Second World War went on painting poems of ecstasy, even when his wife and daughter were captured by the Nazis. It seems a bit crazy, but I don’t think so. He was saying, the best way he could, that we are here to rejoice in this world and not to tear each other to pieces”.
“When Cezanne said that he would astonish Paris with an apple, he did not mean that he was going to announce that apples actually exist in the world. He meant that if you truly saw an apple, with the utmost intensity, then they become astonishing. Just as Bonnard discovered a magical scene when he looked at the breakfast left-overs on the white table cloth”.
John Ellison’s exhibition Song to Pan will be running at the Nolan Gallery, Lovel St Katoomba, from 17th -30th November; with a public opening on Wednesday 19th Nov, 6-8pm.
Nolan Gallery, 56a Lovel  St, Katoomba N.S.W. 2780. Enquiries 02 47826231.