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

ecent pictures and some from the previous six or seven years. Many adopt a world parallel to
Wilby, some refer directly to it, and occasionally there are Irish connections, such as The House of
Ticknock and Holy Hour. But beyond the references this is a body of work that represents Johnson
at that point, coming after so much change, and it shows an absolute maturity in him as an artist.
These works are complex constructions based on remarkable draughtsmanship, but the lines have
softened from the more abstract work of the late 1960s and early 1970s such as Silent Encounter
of 1971, which was included in the same exhibition, although they still retain the same spatial
density, even in drawings such as Holy Hour.
There are stark contrasts between some paintings. Figure in Moonpark harks back to paintings
of the 1950s such as A Voice Crying or Magdalene, with its extremely abstracted figure alone in
a desolate and barren landscape, only relieved by the smoke of a fire or the cloud of an explosion.
The moon has become an alternative imaginative site of human isolation since the post-atomic
vocabulary of the post-war years. The landscape of Bathers is softer and more fertile but its
heightened, hallucinatory colours and awkwardly lumbering figures are still unsettling. But the
lyricism of some new works, such as Breakfast at Wilby, is perhaps more typical of the mood of
the exhibition. This painting’s complex treatment of form within an ambiguous space, as well as
a softer palette, is reminiscent of Braque’s late poetic studio interiors.
The success of Nevill Johnson’s return to Belfast clearly encouraged Tom Caldwell. In
February 1979, a new solo exhibition opened in Caldwell’s gallery in Dublin, at 31 Upper
Fitzwilliam Street. The bulk of this transferred to Belfast in June of that year, with the sold
paintings being replaced by others. Ten paintings sold in Dublin, although only two appear to
have sold in Belfast, a number perhaps being sold afterwards or privately.
The changes prefigured in the previous exhibition are seen more completely here. The cats of
Wilby, animals with which Johnson always felt a kinship and alongside which he had worked there,
are quietly present, as is the moon that hung over the ambiguous ancient Suffolk landscape. The
self-referential The Smallholder and the magisterial Sentio Ergo Sum, create a world within which
Johnson’s highly personal style and artistic persona can explore, ‘first-footing’ it into this world
to unearth the old signs that give some understanding to a later era.
Dawlish featured in a title in the 1978 exhibition and there are suggestions of Cornwall in a
number of works here, including perhaps Window on the Sea, a fine example of Johnson’s later
style, with its sense of absolute resolution, its complex treatment of the image and its muted
palette. In many ways Johnson might be seen alongside English artists such as Graham Sutherland
or Alan Reynolds, who had found such inspiration in natural forms for the structure of their own
images and keys within nature for unlocking its meaning. Much of Johnson’s response to his
experience of living in the landscape, which he wrote of in the Wilby notebooks, is embedded in
his paintings, some parts made obvious, others in code.
84 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
Cottage, Tichnock
Nevill Johnson l London 1978–1999 85