Biography

Born in Wallesey, Cheshire, 1929. John attended Wallesey Grammar School in 1939 but was evacuated to North Wales during the Second World War. Post-war, he returned to Wallesey to study at the local art school 1945-1949. He gained a place at the Royal College of Art, 1949-1952, where he came into contact with influential teachers such as Edward Bawden, RA, John Minton and John Nash (1).

John married Madeline Southern in 1950 and the couple moved to Port Talbot, Wales, where his father and mother had established a shop. They lived with his parents while John taught part-time at Swansea College of Art. It was while living in there that he began to study in depth the dramatic coastline and landscape of Wales, for which he gained public notice in a Daily Express Young Artists Exibition.

In 1955 John and Madeline moved to Essex where he joined the teaching staff at Colchester School of Art, enabling him to renew his contact with John Nash. Head of the school at that time was John Scorrer O’Connor (2), an accomplished painter, particularly of landscapes, and a very popular wood engraver represented in many books and publications of the time.

John worked with Nash at Abingdon Summer School and also at Flatford Mill Centre (3). His teaching career developed when he took up a post at University of Essex as a lecturer in art history and then going on to become a visiting lecturer at Nottingham Trent University and also Norwich School of Art.

Although engaged in teaching, John continued to paint and exhibit his work, with the first of three solo shows at the Minories in 1958. He regularly exhibited with Colchester Art Society, serving at times on the general committee and also showed with Ipswich Art Society. John was represented several times in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions between 1960 and 1987, his last exhibit being Sudbury Meadow (4). He developed a very fluid, open style of watercolour painting; broad washes combined with incisive pencil work and the colours perfectly capturing the Essex/Suffolk landscape.

In 1967 he moved to Sudbury, Suffolk, where he became involved with the management of Gainsborough’s House Gallery and was instrumental in setting up the print workshop there.

Yet another move took the family to West Wales in 1989 and then finally to Pembrokeshire where he died in 2006.

Statement

His first impressions of landscape came from his early years in Wales – coastal locations, dramatic rock forms.

When he started teaching at Colchester, he became very aware of the East Anglian landscape and the history of the artists who had worked there, making a particular study of John Constable.

John worked in the traditional technique of watercolour but with a fluidity and panache that gave his work a strong contemporary appeal. The results were a combination of a clear understanding of the topography of an area, combined with a desire to edge towards an abstract rendering of the subject.

(1) John Nash (1893-1977) RA was the first president of CAS. See 2016 catalogue February Evening, Glemham, Suffolk. [CAS 1]

(2) John Scorrer O’Connor (1913-2004) wood engraver/illustrator and painter, member of CAS. See 2016 catalogue Jenny Bone [CAS 61]

(2) Flatford Mill Centre on the river Stour, an early field study centre started in the 1940s.

(4) RA Catalogue 1987, No 589, Watercolour.