Nevill Johnson: Paint the smell of grass - Eoin O'Brien

It also seems to return us to the idea that these changes of place forced Johnson into a new
beginning, shedding a number of skins with each move. It demonstrates the genuine level of
dissatisfaction Johnson felt with his work and also his determination to confront this and to
produce work that reflected that inner struggle. There was no work left on which to fall back to
sell, exhibit or justify his position as a painter.
This time, as well, things were different. Johnson’s slow-burning crisis in the late 1950s drove
him to the point at which he not only destroyed existing work, but also stopped painting entirely.
He wrote of it as the lowest ebb he had reached and its implications were severe. He had no work
and no money, and despite his experience in business he had no urge to return to this life. He
worked as a milkman, as a night-time exchange operator in a hotel and was also employed for a
period as a painter and decorator. He must have hoped that this period of “analysis, experiment
and reappraisal” would lead him back to painting, but for this period he endured poverty and the
constant boredom of jobs that did nothing beyond feed him. He wrote of his frustrations with
the indignity of poverty as well as the inhibitions it brings.
In terms of judging Nevill Johnson as an artist, we do have to take into account this refusal
to paint when he has no clear sense of how he can find a means of expression. None of his work
was done without serious intent. None of it was done for money, out of habit or for its own sake.
A remarkable diary exists that Johnson seems to have begun at a time when he could sense the
need and the purpose of painting returning. It dates from 1962 and is the only detailed diary as
such that he seems to have preserved. It remains a record that transcends the personal and
individual and becomes an honest description of an artist returning to his own work after a long
period of inactivity and self-examination. The Other Side of Six is a poetic but controlled account
that disguises much and avoids many difficult and intimate subjects. There is no editing in this
diary, as it does not seem intended to be read, although there is a dramatic structure that suggests
perhaps an eye on the possibility of publishing a version of this at some later date.
It marks the second major stage in Nevill Johnson’s life as an artist. From the mid-sixties he
seems to have worked without a stop until his death three and a half decades later. After these
bleak years a decision to paint was made, and from now on the questions only revolved around
the nature of his work, not whether to pursue it.
The diary coincides with the time Johnson spent at Wilby in Suffolk. An inheritance, received
after his mother’s death, had enabled him to buy a number of small cottages and some land there,
a place that had remained relatively untouched by the modern world. He felt his luck was
changing and began to gather the strength to “break through the paper bag” and start painting
again. Wilby was to provide a resolution to his personal life, in that it precipitated the end of one
relationship with an Irish lady living in London and provided a solid foundation for the
beginnings of a life with Margaret, who was to become Johnson’s second wife. Her dislike of the
62 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
Ballywilliam
Nevill Johnson l Wilby and after 1959–1977 63