We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jo Bertini. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jo below.

Jo, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

In 2022, after viewing my solo exhibition ‘Deep in Land’ at GOCA at the University of Colorado, the Chairman and board of Taos Historic Museums invited me to make a new solo exhibition, at the historic E.L. Blumenschein Museum in Taos New Mexico. The Museum was once the home and studio of Ernest Blumenschein, founder of the famous Taos Society of Artists. I made an exhibition of paintings called ‘Mountain of the Watchful Heart, on view from May 27- 9th August 2023. I was very interested in this project particularly as the Taos Society of Artists was historically all men. I wanted to show a contemporary, female version of these places and people of northern New Mexico in this historic museum and studio, alongside the paintings of E.L.Blumenschein.

The high desert lands of Taos and the American Southwest have long attracted indigenous peoples, explorers, pilgrims and artists.The historical version of deserts as harsh, inhospitable places to be conquered or exploited is well chronicled in the Western canon. Yet there is another mostly underrepresented version which interests me. There is a gentle benevolence to these lands, a feminine quality and an atmosphere of acceptance. There is a peacefulness and serenity in their beauty, a sense of openness and nurturing that lives in the wildness here.

The Taos community has long been one of dwellers within a small circle of high desert mountain light, surrounded by immense mystery, where sound trails off into silence, time disappears into timelessness and the known world is lost to re-enchantment. These desert landscapes are recognized as ‘spiritually charged’ and sacred. But rather than a nostalgic approach, I am interested in the intimate and personal experiences of wild desert places. My works contribute a contemporary feminine perspective to the historical archive where artists have long adopted a reverent eye in their interpretations of these deserts. At once familiar, yet strange to me, the high desert landscapes and people of northern New Mexico continue to attract the ‘artist eye’, offering alternative inspirations, not only beautiful and unique to the world, which can contribute to a deeper understanding of global desert environments. My paintings are a type of alchemy, turning the contemporary complexities of environmental, scientific and human concerns into the poetry of art. As many female artists, I have also always been concerned with the ongoing objectification of women throughout art history and culture. I’m interested in re-envisioning the representation of the female through portraits and studies of women desert dwellers and their lives. Sometimes the female figures I paint are hybrids of existing prejudices and often bear multiple cultural references indicative of different ethnicities, which is really how I find the contemporary world, particularly in many remote desert communities where people are often attracted to other ways of living and reflect an attempt to bridge the past and present.

Moments of poetry are vital in my paintings. To seize those particular glimpses of magic that naturally occur in the world or that we somehow intuit or imagine; where a red tailed hawk suddenly swoops down through the river canyon at sunset, so low you can see every tail feather and seemingly oblivious of my presence. Artistically you stop thinking to yourself, you stop hearing yourself, become transparent, synonymous with the landscape. There is an Australian aboriginal saying “the desert right sizes you”.. Desert landscapes for me have a gravitational pull and right now I am particularly beguiled by the American Southwest. My paintings attempt to describe a lifetime of these experiences, moments and memories.

My longtime passion and creative inspiration continues to be about desert environments, ecology, science, history and their preservation. I have recently been invited to work in Mongolia and China and am always excited by the diversity and similarities I encounter when introduced to new desert places. I worked for ten years as the first female Expedition artist in Australia, on scientific and ecological survey expeditions into the most remote and inaccessible regions of central Australia. We walked with strings of pack camels carrying our equipment, camping out under the stars in all sorts of conditions for many months at a time and I became pretty resilient and an expert cameleer. All my decades living and working in these deserts of the world have made me acutely aware of the fragile and extremely endangered nature of these precious, under researched, ecologically rich and biodiverse environments and the crucial importance of their conservation.

Jo, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Bertini is an award winning, established Australian artist. She is a painter, art educator, lecturer and writer, known internationally for her paintings and drawings of desert landscapes, people and animals. Her work is the focus of the publication ‘Fieldwork – Jo Bertini’, celebrating her long and intimate engagement with the Australian deserts. She continues to focus her artistic interests on desert people and places, painting and working in some of the most remote and inaccessible desert regions of the world such as Kutchch in the far north west of India. For ten years, Bertini worked as the first female Expedition Artist on scientific and ecological survey expeditions into the most remote and inaccessible desert regions of Australia. Her international exhibition record is extensive and her art is in numerous private and public collections, including museums and institutions.

I have been very fortunate to be recognised for the work that I have done over decades in the deserts & with the indigenous peoples of Australia and have subsequently been invited to work in other deserts of the world and to exhibit my paintings in Museums and public institutions internationally. Creative isolation is very important to me and I have spent many decades living and working in the most remote isolated desert regions of the world. In 2015 I was invited to Santa Fe to do an artist residency and given access to work with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the School for Advanced Research (SAR). I was so fortunate to be included on a scientific research expedition to Chaco Canyon with some anthropologists, botanists and archaeologists from SAR. My time in New Mexico made a big impression on me and I found so much of the landscapes and cultural material and people and place so familiar yet also so different. I was captivated and as many artists before me became completely “enchanted” by this place. I had committed to working in the deserts of northern India, sponsored by the governments of India and Australia in 2016 and I spent many months living in the far northwest desert regions of Gujerat , Kutchch and Rajasthan living with and painting the lives of the nomadic herding communities such as the Rabari’s, Desi, Raika, Jaats (Jath) and Mer and then had a major exhibition at the Indira Ghandi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA) in New Delhii in 2017. I continued to return and work in New Mexico and was granted an O1 (Extraordinary Talent) visa by the US which allowed me to travel freely between countries.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

It’s all about passion and curiosity. I am a traditionally trained painter and believe in the importance of the personal artistic experience. Initially field work and making studies from life is fundamental to my process in order to develop a deeper understanding and learn my subject well before I attempt any resolution of my own ideas or perspective. Painting is also about experimentation, especially the studio process, the whole act of painting is about exploring what is possible and working reciprocally with the medium.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a painter skill and technique is vital. However experience has taught me sometimes it is necessary to swallow your ego and your intentions and take a leap of faith.and follow your intuition. Just fly with it.

Often I will start a painting having done all my studies with a particular intention that I am determined to achieve and then the painting itself leads me in a completely different direction. It’s all about decision making, choosing when to be assertive and when to take those leaps of faith and follow the process. It’s not that different from science…the vanguard push on the possibilities being discovered or dreamed up in the field or lab. Painting for me is about grappling with my own knowledge and experiences.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jobertini.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jobertini
• Facebook: Jo Bertini Artist
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOPQqhFfTQ0&t=54s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR4A-YmOlMQ
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkLB4DeQjC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkLB4DeQjC8

Image Credits
Thomas Studer