Cold Krush Blog / Jonathan-Guthmann

PRISM EXHIBITION

Artist #23 Jonathan Guthmann

Jonathan Guthmann is an Australian artist currently based in Melbourne.

He predominantly works in the fields of painting, drawing and printing that extends multiple generations into his family history originating from the upper parts of Bavaria, Germany.

"My father migrated to Australia in 1958, and I was born in Sydney, 1980. He being an artist himself, so far back as I can recall there was always the presence of art in my life. In some respects it is something that has always come somewhat naturally to me, something I’ve just always done, having begun to “create” at about the age of 7. I started out with graphite drawing and continued to use this as my sole medium until my later teenage years when I began to branch out into the use of other mediums. Today these include oil paints, oil pastels, pigmented inks, graphite, pen."

"Because my art has conveyed so many different things at different times over the years, to describe the nature of my work as an artist is somewhat difficult. In one sense it is simply the visual aspect of my personal search for self-understanding, but it is also much more than that. My work also is a personal attempt to address the great, perennial and ubiquitous questions that life offers us, such as all those which pertain to God or some “Great Other”, questions pertaining to life beyond death, the existence, nature, origins and future of the human soul, the enigma of suffering, and the uncharted world of the human subconscious."

"For this reason, particularly with work created within the last seven years or so, one will often find it saturated with archetypical imagery, and with esoteric, metaphysical, mythical and religious iconography. My imagery borrows heavily from the worlds of the esoteric and mythical because the forms, ideas and symbols with which they are embedded describe man’s relentless quest to find and to create meaning for himself. Symbols, particularly those we find in these “systems” describe his attempt to address and to comprehend the great mysteries of nature and of being."

Jonathan Guthmann's website