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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Johnson also expresses within the specific landscapes that he paints; Connemara and Minard both suggest an increasing time spent within Ireland. An earlier painting of Minard Castle, begun in 1972 and reworked in 1976, reveals a different aspect to Johnson the landscape painter. Rather than an ordered, complex depiction, it is loose and non-linear, full of event and narrative, with expressive brushstrokes, more reminiscent of Soutine than Johnson’s few usual artistic heroes. Johnson’s work was now beginning to change once again. His drawings had become the shortcut to the workings of his mind in the period following his re-assessment, and now their invention prefigures the development of the paintings. Picasso had Annunciation been perhaps the only painter in whom Johnson had retained any interest, and much as Picasso turned in his later years to interpreting some of the great paintings of his predecessors, such as Velazquez and Manet, so Johnson in his mid-seventies began to revisit Picasso’s own reworkings. These pictures allowed the expression of wit that had existed on the opposite side of the coin of much of Johnson’s earlier work. Perhaps also Johnson recognised in Picasso the theme of magic as a key to understanding and perhaps redemption. By the early nineties the process of simplification and abstraction that had begun in the 1940s had been resolved to the natural conclusion of work that appeared entirely non-referential, although there were clear figurative starting points for most works. These were begun with an acrylic ground, upon which Johnson completed a detailed but simplistic drawing in pencil. This drawing is full of ideas, images, text, narrative. One unfinished work, that still remains at this preparatory stage, has trains, figures, even a hoarding with the lettering for Guinness. Some of the images created by the underdrawing are perhaps more accidental than literal, but they set up an abstract arrangement, as well as establishing undercurrents of theme and mood. Johnson would then begin, using a single colour, to pick out certain lines and shapes, elaborating on certain passages, inventing in others aside from the lines of the drawing. Gradually the abstract relationships take over from the underlying images. The effect of the completed paintings can be 96 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass Figure in a Landscape Nevill Johnson l London 1978–1999 97
98 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass Minard Kerry Landscape with Chair Nevill Johnson l London 1978–1999 99
Page 1 and 2: AVA GALLERY The Courtyard, Clandebo
Page 3 and 4: Self Portrait (detail) 2 Nevill Joh
Page 5 and 6: Acknowledgements THE AUTHORS would
Page 7 and 8: Kilkeel shipyard (detail) I. The Be
Page 9 and 10: His conflict with authority was exp
Page 11 and 12: 18 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell
Page 13 and 14: Europe(detail) II. The Dublin years
Page 17 and 18: 1947 exhibition for which a very de
Page 19 and 20: could also be a tall, etiolated cre
Page 27 and 28: 1947, which has caused some confusi
Page 29 and 30: consider the actual truth of all we
Page 33 and 34: It also seems to return us to the i
Page 35 and 36: exhibited them above all in the 197
Page 37 and 38: time, but despite a not dissimilar
Page 39 and 40: artist and a man, all these created
Page 43 and 44: and a strong reputation for his gal
Page 47 and 48: 1980 saw the publication of Johnson
Page 49: 94 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell
Page 53 and 54: confusing, especially to those unfa
Page 55 and 56: 106 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smel
Page 59 and 60: autobiography; produced a group of
Page 61 and 62: my fellows are enjoying the unusual
Page 63 and 64: 1. I and my wife prepared a picnic
Page 67 and 68: Then two happenings changed the cou
Page 69 and 70: will to continue & suddenly regain
Page 71 and 72: to pin our claims. Then, if the son
Page 75 and 76: Still Life with Falling Leaves Oil
Page 77 and 78: Figure in a Landscape 1979 Acrylic

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

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?