John Sheehy is a practising landscape and conceptual artist living in Sydney and London.

John is a graduate of the Faculties of Arts and Law of the University of Sydney. In 2007 he completed Honours in English, focusing on visual rhetoric in coffee table books of the living room and hotel lobby. This theoretical focus, combined with his background in art history, informs much of the conceptual basis of his artwork: an overwhelming consciousness of the practical processes of art making and art viewing.

John placed fifth in Visual Arts in the New South Wales Higher School Certificate of 2002. Upon leaving high school his attention turned quickly to verbal and written, rather than visual, expression. Having never enjoyed the benefit of professional training as an artist his works are a composite of extensive experimentation with the styles of 20^th century artists whose works can be found on the walls of Sydney’s galleries and, of course, in coffee table books. Some of his greatest influences include Cy Twombly, Peter Upward, Brett Whiteley, Stan Rapotec, Fred Williams, John Olsen, Tony Tuckson and Aida Tomescu.

His landscapes move in one of two directions: abstracted forms which frame the Sydney and wider Australian landscape between the competing forces of the vertical and horizontal, or alternatively, gentle, understated works of naive figuration. The conceptual focus of his landscapes is the undercoat: the literal and metaphoric starting point of painting. His works reverse the art making process by finishing with the undercoat, and by doing so hope to comment on what it means to present a pristine, untouched contemporary landscape.

His conceptual artworks are self consciously ideational. In his first year as a practising artist he was selected as a finalist in the Brunswick Street Gallery Art Prize ’09 for a work entitled “Any size – Any theme – Any medium : instructions for display (after Sol Lewitt)” , synthetic polymer on 2 x self-inking, retractable stamps. His conceptual works fashion art making and art viewing as an inherently tongue-in-cheek experience and intend to provide up-to-date accounts on how the big ideas of art’s past are being processed by artists of today.

In 2008 he was selected as one of 33 young and emerging Australian artists to paint a 160cm tall fiberglass statue of Jesus for World Youth Day ’08. His work, “faith-by-numbers” (a 3-dimensioanl take on the popular paint-by-numbers medium) introduced him to the wonderful world of Dulux sample pots.

He held his first solo commercial exhibition at Harrison Galleries of Paddington, Sydney, in November 2009. His next solo show is at Art2Muse Gallery in Double Bay from 27 July to 10 August 2010.

John’s works are currently available through BECKER MINTY in Potts Point, Harrison Galleries in Paddington, Art2Muse in Double Bay or through private sale.