LOOK closely in the bottom corners of Tim Johnson's painting Community base, which last night won the $50,000 Arthur Guy Memorial Guy Painting Prize, and you'll see two small stencils of choo-choo trains.These were applied by the Sydney artist's three-year-old twins, Leo and Dion, who the 63-year-old artist says are dragging him into new territory. Johnson, who also has two adult children, has explored a lot of artistic territory since he began painting in the early 1970s.
He has moved from the wild and wacky performance art of that explosive era, moved on to the more cerebral post-modernism of the '80s, and then delved into notions of ''cultural identity'' in the '90s as he explored Buddhism and various aspects of Asian and Native American art while also experimenting with photography and computer imagery.
''I was thinking about that question of what the 'next thing' might be on the way up on the bus to Bendigo,'' Johnson said yesterday at the Bendigo Art Gallery, which administers the biennial prize and is showing an exhibition of works by the 37 finalists from the 330 artists who entered this year's competition.
''But I don't think I can predict what the next thing will be until it happens. I don't think you can move on to the 'next' or 'new' thing but add to what you already know. And at the moment I think I'm probably adding my kids' perspective at how I look at things.''
Perspective is at the heart of Johnson's winning painting, which he painted in his Newtown studio over two weeks in preparation for a Sydney show, where it failed to sell.
Community base's aerial perspective is a view of Western Desert artists working alone or gathered at humpies in family groupings in the early 1980s when Johnson travelled to Papunya to work with its artists, who included the revered Clifford Possum and Charlie Tarawa. They are two of the 40 or so real people depicted in the painting and re-created on canvas from photographs Johnson took at the time.
So is Johnson also in the painting? ''No,'' he said. ''Hang on, I might be,'' he interrupted himself, pausing to looks at the 150-centimetre by 180-centimetre painting. ''No, I'm not because I was usually behind the camera.''
The painting uses Aboriginal dot patterns as well as what the artist describes as ''multiple vanishing effects''.
''And it has imagery from other sources - there's Asian bits and imagery from Chinese embroidery,'' he said, explaining that the multiplicity of motifs is a reflection of the world. ''Life is so much more complicated today and there's a lot of influences and imagery coming at us all the time and I tried to reflect that.''
The painting also provides Johnson's perspective on a life spent making art.
''They [the Western Desert artists] were a model to me of how you can work just living in their own community doing their own work and getting recognition from their community,'' he said.
It's a model Johnson has followed, which is probably why he is not as well known as many artists of his generation.
''I have never really promoted myself too much,'' he said, though he admitted that he had noticed an increase in attention since 2009 when a retrospective, Painting Ideas: Tim Johnson, organised by the Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, toured east-coast capitals and showed at Melbourne's Ian Potter Museum of Art.
''Sometimes good things happen when you don't need them and when you do need them they tend not to happen. I think the flow-on effect of the retrospective has helped me,'' said Johnson, whose paintings sell from $5000 for small works to about $60,000 for large multi-panelled works.
Bendigo Art Gallery director Karen Quinlan chose Johnson's work for the $50,000 cash prize ''unanimously'' with four other judges in a two-hour session on Thursday. She said that not even some of the judges had a thorough knowledge of Johnson's work but it was first on each of their list of favourites.
The Bendigo Art Gallery gets to keep the painting for its collection while the Guy family provides the $50,000 prize to the artist.
Given that artists who have won the previous three Arthur Guy Memorial Prizes can command more than $50,000 for large works, Ms Quinlan said it was time to consider increasing the prizemoney for the 2013 award
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