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

108 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
The Gleaner
within these paintings is immense, but
perhaps most striking for an artist well
into his eighties is the energy and the
inventiveness that runs through all of
them. The clashing and overlapping of
these strong and unfussy formal
shapes creates a very physical sense of
immediacy and dynamism in works
that, as Brian Kennedy writes in his
introduction to the catalogue,
“exhibit great assurance and
determination of character”.
Johnson’s insistence on moving
forward constantly, rarely taking the
easy route, came to the fore again
when the National Self-Portrait
Collection of Ireland commissioned
Child Resting
him. Despite having painted a number
of self-portraits in the past, this work marked a departure for Johnson into even more conceptual
terrain and he commented with delight on the subsequent interest of the Limerick museum on seeing
the completed work. Musing on the multi-faceted nature of any identity and the complexity of
establishing a single clear self-image within society or privately, Johnson joined together various
drawings and pieces of text that explored the idea of a self-portrait, rather than providing a likeness.
In all Johnson’s later work there is a complete absence of vanity. Despite his confidence in the
importance of the work he was producing, he is still against the establishment and never seeking
easy acceptance or honours, financial reward or the interest of the market and still determined to
challenge and question in his work to retain an absolute honesty as an artist. When The Family,
painted in 1953, was sold for £20,000 at auction in 1993, Dublin dealers appeared at Johnson’s
council flat to ask whether he still owned any work from this period and, as he did not, whether
he could paint anything similar, ignoring his new work. Typically, this offer was of no interest.
At a time when artists were increasingly keen to promote their own importance and prices and
many were becoming extremely wealthy, he remained a remarkable example of how one should
retain humility in front of one’s work and the idea of making art that is able to achieve anything
of lasting importance.
This is not the only way in which Johnson stands alone amidst his Irish contemporaries. The
range of his achievement, little known as yet though it is, is breathtaking. He published an
Nevill Johnson l London 1978–1999 109