About John
I was 10 years old when I sold my first drawing! It was to a travelling junior art exhibition which was touring all the major cities and country centres. From that moment, I knew what I eventually wanted to do with my life!
My history
The time was 1956, only a year and a half since my parents had immigrated to Australia from Italy and just months from arriving in Adelaide from a railway siding on Willochra station in South Australia’s Mid-North, where my father had found work. This new country, opened up expanses, landscapes and colours, previously unknown to me and these new sensations infiltrated my being to my very soul. Australia was indeed a very special place and of constant inspiration to a young boy.
I had kept up my drawing throughout my school years, but decided to make my living through music after finishing school. In 1967 I entered a career in Gemmology and jewellery design. By 1974 I had won the South Australian Jewellery Design Awards and the Australian Jewellery Design Awards and began a successful jewellery design business. The chance to finally enter into the fine art world came in 1980, when my life circumstances changed.
The inspiration for my early work was derived by studying the works of the Italian Masters, Andrew Wyeth, Robert Bateman and Raymond Harris-Ching. Later, I studied the technical mastery of artists like Rothko, Pollock, Klimt, Schiele and also some African, South American and Island Art cultures, in order to develop my own style of painting.
In 2003, after years of experimentation, I finally developed a style that suited my disposition and my obsession with dimensionality. A style that I coined 'Contourism'. This allowed me to paint from representational to abstract subject matter, whilst still possessing the fluidity, movement and three-dimensionality that I had been searching for!
In 2006, Australian Art Review described my paintings in this manner
John Cerlienco – Contourism – the works are high impact, full colour explorations of flower specimens and sections. Cerlienco's individual painting method produces a layered and luminous 3-dimensional study of flowers - as if viewed through a macro lens. These unique works are a culmination of Cerlienco's experimentation and labour, having worked for many years on a very personal method in painting. The technique has been named 'Contourism', a method incorporating baroque contour lines intertwined with the use of complimentary and secondary colour. These lines are contrasted with highlights and shadows, creating a depth of field and dimension seldom encountered in painting. In effect, the works are first painted in the usual manner followed by the application of lineal contours (raised from the surface by two millimetres or so which then dries suggesting a distressed surface) and the work is then further painted and enhanced. The resulting effect is quite extraordinary.