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

artist and a man, all these created a mythology that drove his painting for the following four
decades. Perhaps it also became an imaginative retreat from London life which, while it is referred
to on occasions, is largely absent from Johnson’s work. Wilby appears to have been the turning
point at which decisions were made and an understanding of the shape of the future reached, so
that the vocabulary of Wilby life extends in meaning into all that occurred subsequently. The
psychological landscape took on the form of Wilby, the beauty of its ancient landscape, the
renewal of the seasons, the disappointment and nostalgia of a vanished existence.
Looking through the catalogue of the 1972 exhibition there are Johnsonian titles from the
past, such as Enigma or My Father’s House, others that recall the existential bleakness of Beckett,
74 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
The Shepherd
Landscape
Nevill Johnson l Wilby and after 1959–1977 75