John A. D. Stockdale

John A. D. Stockdale

Scottsdale - John A. D. Stockdale, Modernist Painter and Atomic and Molecular Physicist dies at 83. John Stockdale, the Australian born artist and physicist who believed the disparate worlds of science and art informed each other, died on July 14 at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was 83.

Dr. Stockdale became fascinated with painting in earnest while he was studying physics at Sydney University. His first paintings were in the abstract expressionist style and captured the attention of the Sydney art establishment with his first show at the Hungry Horse Gallery in Sydney. His paintings and photographs are in the collections of the National Gallery of Art Australia, the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the University of Wollongong, NSW. While still a student at Sydney University he met Helen Sutton and they married in 1957. They were part of a circle of Australian artists and intellectuals that included the Nobel Prize winning author Patrick White.

As a physicist, he did research at the Australian Atomic Energy Commission and, in the United States, at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. He later did advanced laser Research at New York University, The FORTH Institute in Heraklion Crete, and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California.

A prolific artist his entire life, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1970. He showed in New York first at the Allan Stone Gallery and later with the Bertha Urdang Gallery in New York and the Riva Yares Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. Travels and mathematical ideas often informed his art which frequently featured a formalized gridded background superimposed with natural and figurative elements.

Also an accomplished photographer, his photographs ranging from Tennessee country signage to rusted security shutters on Times Square perhaps best express his characteristic sardonic wit and sharp eye. He once said, "Photography can be dangerous because it can make something beautiful that isn't." He had one-man shows of his photographs at the OK Harris Gallery in New York and the Berkeley Museum of Art among other venues.

John Alexander Douglas Stockdale was born on March 15, 1936 in Queensland Australia. He attended TAS and St. Paul's College at Sydney University and received his PhD from the University of Tennessee. He is survived by his wife Helen Margaret Stockdale, his daughters Helen Kim Stockdale, and Shane Victoria Stockdale, his son Alexander Michael Stockdale and five granddaughters.