John Fairfull, Landings, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2015.
John Fairfull is a contemporary painter with a flare for the arts pertaining to travel and tourism. After nearly two decades of travelling the major art districts of Europe, South Africa, Eastern Asia, and Australia, he received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD), in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
With an insatiable desire to see a world far different than his small hometown of Elora, Ontario, he took to the horizon. Opportunities befitted him to the exotic allure of Papua New Guinea, wherein he spent most of his years. For five years he was Captain of the Sepik Spirit. This time was filled with stark cross-cultural contacts, being adopted into a family, and being invited to be initiated into a very remote and sacred scarification ritual, whose recipients are revered as Puk-puk man (Crocodile men).
With both the traditional and digital canvas as his current vessel, he transports the viewer into his woven landscapes, narratives, and experiences. Being lost onto his surreal textures, he oft commands with the art of exploration. It is with derivative pleasure John Fairfull awes the viewer into his vast repertoire of real and (im)possible worlds.
John Fairfull, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2017.