‘In December 2025, the art world lost Geoffrey Legge to old age. A poetic writer and a deep-thinking man, Geoff loved a painting by John Peart, Black to Black (1982). It hung on the wall at the foot of his bed, where he could contemplate it each morning and night.Though dark and sombre in tone, the painting gave Geoffrey endless pleasure. He continually found new ways of interpreting its passages of paint. So taken was he by the work that, in 2008, he produced a small book imagining a conversation between the composer Beethoven and the poet Milton, in which both attempt to account for the depth of their admiration for the painting. In one passage, Beethoven addresses Milton:
“Ah, John, I feel in my heart that the implications of this work are vast and its mysteries inexhaustible. It is not a landscape painting, yet it takes my eye (and therefore me) into a reassuring twilight kingdom where the threshold is dearer than love and where one is led further than hope could go.”
Geoff understood that meaning is never fixed, and that looking is an active act. My hope is that my dear viewer might do the same—to let their eyes wander, to stay awhile, to become immersed in marks, colour, and references, and to come away with something not only seen, but felt.’
– John Bartley, 2026 (Excerpt from John’s Artist Statement)
