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George Gittoes is best described as someone who has single-mindedly pursued many paths, often at the same time. It is only now, in his maturity, that it is possible to see how all his apparently disparate achievements are indeed footsteps in the one elaborate pattern, finally synthesised in the work of an artist at the height of his powers. Gittoes is, in a very real sense, an artist for our times, presenting a kaleidoscopic vision of an empire heading towards implosion.

The starting point for all Gittoes's art is the same - his diaries. These thick black bound books are his constant companions. The artist began keeping diaries at school, but it was during his involvement with the experimental art space, the Yellow House in Sydney's Kings Cross,   and influenced by his lover Marie Briebauer, that the diaries transformed from being a mainly written record of ideas to their present overwhelming mix of fine line drawings, press cuttings, random words, horrifying images and ideas in motion. The diaries continued as Gittoes, prompted by his lover's suicide, fled the city and emotional and intellectual darkness, towards a celebration of beauty and clear pure light at Bundeena on the southern fringes of Sydney. Bundeena has been Gittoes's home since 1972. It is not possible to fully comprehend the artist's forays into war and into the darkness of the human soul without recognising the peace he gains swimming, where the bush meets the sea, in the bay in Bundeena.
 
The legacy of the Yellow House is a thread that runs through all of Gittoes's work. It was there that the nineteen-year-old Gittoes first saw experimental films made by fellow Australians at a time before the establishment of a local film industry. But most importantly for Gittoes's long-term practice was the way artist Martin Sharp - whose intelligence guided the ethos of the Yellow House's creative commune - based all his work on collage. The best way of describing Gittoes's approach to art is that he layers and accumulates material until, out of apparent chaos, there is a synthesis of idea, passion and image.
 
This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the article in its entirety in Art & Australia's Summer 2007 issue.