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:: Biography :: | Featured Works
Leo Smaniotto is a professional Mining Engineer and artist. He uses his wide
ranging artistic ability to exercise his vivid imagination to record his visual,
intellectual and emotional perceptions of the wonderful and unique Australian outback
environment.
The first 55 years of his life was spent in and around Broken Hill, where most of his time
in early youth saw him pursuing the freedom that the vast semi-arid country allows. Here
he learnt and practiced a variety of skills relating to working and exploring the land.
The memories of such experiences along with the isolation, heat and general vastness of
the environment are still cherished and Leo is still attracted to the outback for his
inspiration.
Leo can paint in many styles, but prefers, and is best known for, the style he developed
for his unique Mulga Bill paintings. (Mulga Bill is a character from one of Banjo
Patterson's poems.) With the whimsical play of Leo's imagination combined with his unique
painting style, Leo's Mulga Bill epitomises the laconic Australian who is game enough and
ready for anything.
Mulga Bill has an infinite number of adventures as can be seen in his outback racetracks,
outback pubs and at the bar with his favourite barmaid. Leo strongly believes that every
painting should have something to say about the pioneering spirit and sense of humour of
the early Australian Battler. He uses bold, vibrant colours to portray his laconic
Australian in many interesting situations.
Leo confesses that his paintings are generally pure imagination and that they express his
emotional and nostalgic feelings. He has a lot of fun sometimes painting himself as Mulga
Bill, but mostly he portrays a little bit of everyone in his Mulga Bill and that is why
his character and paintings are so popular. |
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