Eavesdropping, etching
Born 1940
Elected ARE 1973
Elected RE Fellow 1978
John sadly passed away February 2023
John studied painting at Stoke-on-Trent College of Art and teacher training at Leicester College of Art in the early 1960s. He taught at Mexborough Grammar School, South Yorkshire, 1963-67, and Selhurst, London, 1967-1988, before being appointed Senior Lecturer in Visual Studies at Croydon College, 1988-1996.
He lived and worked at Beckenham, Kent, and exhibited widely in group shows including those of the New English Art Club, the London Group, the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Academy.
He was elected to the RE as an Associate in 1973, becoming a Fellow in 1978. He subsequently spent a period on the Council and was a regular exhibitor in members exhibitions.
He has work in numerous private and public collections, including the Print Archive at Aberystwyth University.
John was introduced to etching as a schoolboy at Longton High School and he soon came to admire the work of Morandi, Villon and Gross.
His early work was influenced by the shapes, atmosphere and aura of the heavy and omnipresent potteries and mining industries of the Midlands. These factories, warehouses, bottle-ovens and canals; giving way to farm-machinery and cranes.
His later etchings of abstract compositions were inspired by rural landscapes, particularly the rolling hills of the West Country. Trees: non-topographical landscape and dense, detailed flora were a stimulus.
He utilised a range of needles and dental tools to create varied effects on his etching plates.
'A copper plate with a hard ground and access to a wide range of mark-making tools is my creative bliss'.
We are sorry that we are no longer able to take enquiries for sales of John's work.