John has been painting for many years

As a child the best way I could find to convey emotions and ideas was through the visual medium of symbols and drawing. This later developed into painting, and in particular painting in oils, where the environmental melding of aromas, textures, and the tactile use of the knife allows a freer means of expression.

I do not belong to any school, but the description I am most comfortable with to explain my work is that it is a marriage between Cubism and Surrealism.

Recently, I have found inspiration in researching my ancestry and all of my paintings now reflect these themes. Lives were often brief and times were harsh but I believe that life experience was deeper in days gone by. For a carpenter then truly was a carpenter. These are now my archetypes and they have proved a rich source of food for the imagination.

My art has always been very important to me and has often been the motivation for the direction my life has taken and the strategy behind any major decisions I have made.

As with poetry, I feel that a work of art has been successful if it communicates something which is difficult to put into words, a meaning beyond the construction of sentences, or the mere illustration of a scene. This then is my aim, and I have put this selection of pictures on my website because I believe that individually they go beyond simply being visual interpretations.

I hope that you will take some time to look at my paintings, and I hope that you like what you see and look beyond the surface to try to catch the meaning behind the colours and lines.

I have chosen mostly to paint on boards, which I prepare and cover myself in butter muslin, or cotton canvas. This is stuck onto the sized board with either the best quality PVA or rabbit skin glue, and I then prime the surface. The paints I use are normally artists quality colours. In this way the materials used in the painting, as well as the painting itself, will in most cases outlast the traditional stretched canvas.

Producing the painting from beginning to end in this manner enriches the feeling of creating a work of art and adds to the depth of the experience.