Profile

John was born in 1956 and studied painting and drawing at Camberwell School of Art and Design in the mid nineteen seventies. In the early eighties he co-founded the artist’s group “Work From Common Knowledge” and exhibited in London in various venues including The Round House and Battersea Arts Centre.*

Later he exhibited with the Museum of Installation in both London and Los Angeles and was involved in the exhibition “Land” at Riverside Studios. He has made two artist residencies in Slovenia and has had two illustrated narratives published, one made into a radio broadcast and one a short film for Channel Four’s After Image series in the 1990s.

His paintings have featured in group shows and at London Metropolitan University’s gallery spaces. John worked at the university for many years as Course Leader of the Foundation Studies programme.

* The group produced the artist’s book “Work from Common Knowledge” with Circle Press where John worked, and had reviews and comment published in Studio International, Flash Art and Art Monthly.

About

My preferred method of working (painting) is outside in front of the subject (usually landscape) in one or often two goes. I find it hard to recall or imagine the specifics of nature and want to see it in front of me in order to work.

The tones and colours especially are always changing and the light moves around and comes and goes so that I feel the need to work quite quickly – but not so quickly that detail and the particular are lost. Not everything can be recorded so it becomes a process of choosing, suggesting and trying.

Viewpoint and composition are important because of interest created by perspective, scale, gaps, mass and recessional space. So a lot of this time is spent beforehand walking about and looking to see what might become a possible painting.

Each painting or drawing is a sort of little experiment to try and capture a fleeting moment, something I have seen and felt, to try and make it fixed, so that I can see it again, can always see it.

And the ways of doing it are always slightly evolving so that it feels slightly different each time, even if the subject remains the same.

One can be familiar with a place or a subject over many years but then a new view or situation presents itself afresh, that had not been seen before, and it seems worth trying again.

Paintings

Paintings are oil on board or canvas and vary between 30 x 25cm and 44 x 35cm


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Drawings

Drawings are pencil or charcoal and are A4 on wove paper


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