John Wilson's Biography
| A selection of John Wilson's work | ||
 Forever Young (Canvas) |
 M-Maybe (Canvas) |
 Yesterday, Today, Tommorrow (Canvas) |
My first recollection of having an interest in art was at the age of 10 when I entered into a school Easter Card Competition and won first prize. This inspired me to carry on drawing, particularly incorporating my main interest at that time of aircraft and cars. Things changed when I was 12 � for Christmas I was given a set of oil paints and an easel (the easel I still use today 40 years later!). Painting in oil opened up a whole new world of colour and texture, as well as filling the house with the wonderful scent of linseed and turpentine.
I then enrolled in painting classes on a Saturday morning at the �Harrogate School of Art�, which I attended for about 2 years. I then took my art interest even further and attended a part time evening course where I was introduced to figure painting and also pop art. My high point at that time was a �pop art� self-portrait, which was displayed as part of an exhibition in the Harrogate Art Gallery.
Due to the need to earn a living, painting unfortunately had to take a back seat for the next few years. I married and had 3 beautiful daughters whilst running my own small business for 25 years. For my own pleasure however, I did manage to continue to paint in my spare time.
It therefore wasn�t until the mid 1990�s that I actually went back to art more seriously and started exhibiting in the local galleries. I now have various galleries in the area requesting my work and I�ve had several successful exhibitions. Painting now takes up most of my time - I go to bed thinking of my latest painting and wake up with ideas for the next.
Finding a subject or idea for a painting can be a daunting task, and can often come from the most unlikely source. I remember once going to a Hockney exhibition, where a striking painting at the opposite end of the gallery caught my eye. I saw this painting as depicting a flight of stairs following up to some marble arches, through which I saw the sun sitting in a bright blue sky. As I got closer to the painting it became clear that it was actually nothing like that at all. It was in fact a wooden table standing on a veranda overlooking the sea. This later inspired me to paint the picture I first thought I�d seen.
When my youngest daughter, Stephanie was four years old she brought home a wax crayon picture of herself from playschool. As soon as she showed it to me I was fascinated by the way it had been drawn and by the colours used. I then began to look at other children�s drawings and found one main similarity between them all � the fact that nearly all children draw people full frontal; with either stick or fat arms and legs; and yet they nearly always draw animals in profile. I found it really interesting the way children tend to perceive and interpret things within their everyday lives, often in the same way. Although Picasso once said that when he was a child he could paint like an adult, and he spent all his adult life trying to paint like a child. This led me to thinking that some of the old masters - Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Da Vinci - would have probably drawn people in exactly the same way when they were about four years old. This subsequently gave me the idea of mixing children�s art, with no inhibitions, together with the carefully planned paintings of the adult artist. This style of painting has proved very successful for me and the more children�s art I study, the more I will be able to continue to find various ways of developing and combining the adult approach to painting with that of a child�s.
Over the last couple of years I have never actually been stuck for subject matter � in fact I�ve always tended to have plenty of ideas for my next few paintings already in my mind. And I still find that there is always a real sense of accomplishment on completing a painting, together with the excitement of beginning the next.
�Out of the ashes rose the Phoenix��� My palette is a mess, my paint box is a mess, I somehow end up splashing paint over everything including myself, and yet a clean, sharp picture emerges out of it all! That�s probably one of the reasons I enjoy painting so much - the fact that out of all this chaos, there�s really a hidden sense of order within it all.
A few years ago I worked exclusively in watercolour, but when one of the paintings I was working on required a stronger colour, I was forced to experiment with a less familiar type of paint. So I bought a tube of gouache, and the rest, as they say, is history! That one tube resulted in a change in the whole way I painted - to the point that 90% of what I now do is in gouache.
I usually start with a very small rough sketch, which I then enlarge onto my full size heavy watercolour paper. I do very little pencil work here, just enough to mark out the perspective. I prefer to work freehand with the paint straight onto the paper and see what emerges.
When doing a painting that incorporates children�s art, I use wax crayon, and although I�m right handed, to get the desired effect I tend to use my left hand. A painting can take me anywhere from one afternoon, to 4 days to complete, depending upon the amount of detail. And these can often be pretty long days! But once I�m immersed within my painting, I don�t tend to realise what the time is! At various stages throughout a picture, however, I need to stop and take a step back from it, just to make sure that it is developing as I had envisaged. On the satisfactory completion of a painting I will give it a title and then finally photograph it for my own records.
How many people wake up on a dreary Monday morning feeling excited about going to work? And how many people enjoy what they do so much that they often don�t even take the weekend off?! Well, I think I must just be one of the lucky ones. I always seem to find myself looking forward to either getting back to a painting I�m already working on, or starting on the next and sorting through all the ideas going on in my head.
For me a typical day starts around 6:30am, when I get up and organised and see the rest of the family off for the day. I am then relatively undisturbed and usually begin painting at around 9am. I work in my studio, which is actually a conservatory at the back of the house. And when it�s windy and raining outside, I certainly feel very relieved that I don�t have to go out in it to get to my place of work. Usually if I�m in the middle of a picture, I can just sit down at my easel and get straight on with it, but if I�m starting a new painting I need to think about it and do some rough sketches. I work in short sessions, probably 2 hours at a time with short breaks in between, so I can evaluate the work I�ve done so far.
When I�m painting I like to have a cup of tea next to me all the time, although I usually end up drinking it cold as I get so absorbed in what I�m doing.
I try to put a little humour into my paintings and I know when I�ve succeeded when my family come home and it puts a smile on their faces. They are my greatest critics, so in the evening we like to view my days work and relax with a glass of wine.
