John Kelly (artist)
John Kelly (born 1965) is an Australian artist. Early life Kelly was born in England in 1965. His family emigrated to Australia later the same year and settled in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine. In 1985, he earned a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts Painting) from RMIT where he also completed his Masters of Arts in 1995. As a winner of the 1995 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, he travelled to London to study as an Affiliate Student at the Slade School of Art from 1996 to 1997. Works Paintings – early works (Dobell's cows) Kelly's interest in Australian history clashed with his idiosyncratic sense of humour and this collision created his early Dobell's Cows series (1992–1996) based on the work of the artist Sir William Dobell. Dobell and his fellow artists were commissioned to camouflage airfields during WWII, and as part of this ruse Dobell made papier-mâché cows and scattered them around airfields to deceive the Japanese pilots – "Said Bill, I think the authorities underestimate the eyesight of the Japanese airmen". There is very little historical record that these cows actually existed although Dobell's camouflage activities at Menangle and Bankstown aerodrome are well documented in