Limited edition of 30 digital prints, individually signed and numbered by the artist - for more information go to PRINTS page
 A limited edition of 100 Giclée prints is now available. Please see the Prints page for more information.
 My recent painting: 'The Bullshiteers (with a nod to Hans Holbein)'
I completed it a couple of weeks before the US election - a satirical take on Holbein's 16th century masterpiece: 'The Ambassadors', which hangs in The National Gallery, London. A limited edition of prints available on my PRINTS page. Over the last few summers I’ve taken advantage of any really sunny mornings to make pictures in the garden. Wherever direct sunlight was falling on the ground, I’d place a number of picture frames, customized with clamps or clips holding them firmly together. Periodically throughout the day, I’d return to reposition the frames, following the course of the sun until it finally set above the houses. The frames would then be gathered up again and brought inside to be returned the next morning, and so on. There were no brushstrokes made. The sun was the key to making these pictures and I just needed to ensure the frames were in the right place for them to take shape. I was busy making anthotypes, an early form of photograph in which a delicate silhouette or photogram is created using only natural pigments exposed to sunlight. Pressed between the glass of the frame and a piece of stained paper, I placed any collected leaves or plant cuttings, as well as negatives printed onto acetate. This beautifully simple and satisfying process gradually creates a stunningly ephemeral image.
Digital photography has moved us into new ways of image making, but more and more artists are returning to the old science behind early photography as a way to revisit and explore the many creative possibilities. The English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel was a pioneer in actino-chemistry and wrote a paper in 1842 entitled – “On the action of the rays of the solar spectrum on vegetable colours, and on some new photographic processes.” His experiments used solutions including those derived from plants and flowers that were light-sensitive. I’ve made anthotypes from a range of pigments including fruit juices (the most successful being pure cranberry and blueberry), vegetable dyes (beetroot and red cabbage are good), coffee, red wine and spices. Anthotypes are a great little Science/Art experiment to make with kids. The results aren’t instant, but as long as shadows aren’t being cast across your frame, you can leave one on the window sill during the week, and check on its progress at the end of each day. You’ll find that pigments have a range of different qualities and lightfastness. Beetroot, for example, turns yellow when exposed to the sun, which contrasts beautifully to the rich magenta colour of the original pigment, and you can see the exposed colour changing within a few days of sunshine. Blueberry juice on the other hand is very lightfast, and it can take weeks to get a really good contrast. Most pigments will need a few coats to get a really strong colour on the paper. The water left over from steamed red cabbage will give you an intense blue if you give the paper several coats. If you simply haven’t got the time to prepare pigments in the kitchen, you can buy pure juices and dyes off the shelf, but probably the most instant and mess-free way to start, especially for projects with children, is to buy a cheap multi-coloured pack of sugar paper. The pigments used in the manufacturing of this paper are bright and vibrant but are not lightfast, so they work perfectly for anthotypes. When finished, they can be kept and enjoyed in scrapbooks or as bookmarks. You can, of course, produce anthotypes throughout the year indoors, if you use a UV lamp, but there is something special about the seasonal nature of making them in the sun, and the results are very rewarding. Some artists do exhibit anthotypes, but because the pigments used are so sensitive to any further exposure to light, they are usually viewed in galleries by lifting up a protective piece of black-out material. If exposed to direct sunlight the darker areas of an anthotype will gradually fade away entirely, a reminder that these are truly ephemeral images that appear and disappear in the light.  A couple of years ago I saw Gregory Porter perform at the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells. After the performance Mr Porter kindly gave me permission to take some photos so that I might paint a portrait of him. I was there with my wife and parents, and we still talk about the great performance he and his accompanying musicians gave that evening. I believe that he is one of the most exciting musical artists of our time, and continue to be a fan of his work.
It has taken me a while to complete the portrait so I’m especially pleased to be able to post a picture of it on my website at last! The original currently has pride of place above our dining room table. I designed a pattern for the painting’s background which is almost completely obscured, but is still visible in a subtle way that I’m really pleased with. Almost ten years ago I visited Prague, a wonderful city with lots to see and do, especially if you like history, art and music. There’s more than enough within the city to keep you occupied for at least a week, but I’d heard about something outside the capital worth travelling for: the Slovanska Epopej or Slav Epic, by Alfons Mucha. The artist devoted 16 years of his life to these canvases, finally completing them in 1928 when he was 68 years of age.
Mucha is probably best known for his distinctive Art Nouveau illustrations, advertisements and posters, sometimes unfairly perceived as “pretty” or “chocolate boxy”. But Mucha was a painter who combined both skill and complexity. Since 2012, the Epic has been on display within the city of Prague, at a temporary exhibition space in the National Gallery’s Veletržní Palace, where the canvases were first viewed back in 1928. When I saw the paintings in 2007, however, there was considerable travelling involved, with a 4 hour “fast train” to the small town of Moravský Krumlov and a 5 hour return trip via Brno. It’s about 200km South-East of Prague in the South Moravia region, almost halfway to Budapest in Hungary, and closer to Vienna than to Prague. For almost 50 years the gigantic rooms of a dilapidated chateau in the heart of the town were home to the Slav Epic. The chateau itself had an air of unworldliness about it that reminded me of the Beast’s house in La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau. The location itself is just 10km away from the town of Ivančice, Mucha’s birthplace. The first thing that strikes the visitor about the paintings is how truly monumental they are, both in scale and realisation. Seeing them in the flesh is almost like being up close to a cinema screen, yet the closer you stand the more enticing and richly textured the surface becomes, with all its different hues and details becoming more clearly focused. As a young man Mucha had worked as an assistant in the workshop of the Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt Company in Vienna for two years, painting theatre stage-sets after failing to get into the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He must have witnessed for himself the impact great pictorial scenes could have on an audience. The largest of the canvases (numbers 1 to 7), measure an astounding 8.10 X 6.10 metres – reminiscent in scale of a theatrical backdrop. The rest of the twenty are slightly smaller, though still massive by most standards, varying between 4 x 4 and 6 x 4 metres. Mucha used egg tempera mostly, only employing oil for finer details. I sometimes wonder how many eggs Mucha must have cracked open to complete the Epic. The paintings have a very matt finish, common to tempera, which allows for a clear view of all the detail and texture across the surface, unobscured by the glossiness that might have resulted from oils. The canvases were imported from Brussels, where the material was originally produced for ship’s sails. The idea for a cycle celebrating the history of the Slavs came to Mucha sometime at the end of the 19th Century, driven by a desire to show the Bohemian people their cultural origins. The last two paintings in the cycle have a distinctly political, even nationalistic feel, and it’s worth remembering that Czechoslovakia was still a young democratic republic when the paintings were completed. Mucha had been born in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it was only in 1918 when Mucha was 58 years old that Czechoslovakia became a sovereign state. A rich patron from the USA, Charles Crane, agreed to pay for all of Mucha’s expenses connected with producing the works and the French historian Ernest Denis, with his specialism in Slav history, offered Mucha his vast knowledge of the subject. Mucha left the entire Slav Epic to the city of Prague in his will, on condition that a special pavilion was designed to display it. Unfortunately, this condition was not fulfilled after his death. On 15th March 1939, German troops marched into Prague and took control of Bohemia and Moravia. Within six months the Second World War began in Europe. To prevent the Nazis either acquiring or destroying them, the Slav Epic canvases were rolled up and hidden. The 79 year-old Mucha was one of the first well-known public figures in Prague to be interrogated by the Gestapo, perhaps because he had become such a popular symbol and exponent of Czech democracy. While these gruelling interrogations took place, Mucha fell ill with pneumonia. He died from a lung infection a few months later in July 1939. In 1954 the Slav Epic was brought to Moravský Krumlov, but not put on display to the public until 1963. The communist government in Prague had little interest in building a special pavilion for the paintings, and Mucha’s work was considered petit bourgeois and old-fashioned. The epic remained in Moravský Krumlov until 2012, only returned to Prague after a fierce argument and a controversial legal battle over where the paintings should reside. The town of Moravský Krumlov had taken legal action to ban the relocation of the paintings on the grounds that Prague had no rights to do so after failing for so long to fulfil the artist’s conditions. Despite this resistance, along with Mucha’s surviving descendants and the Mucha Foundation raising concerns about the suitability of the exhibition arrangements in Prague, the collection was moved. Over a thousand local residents and art students turned out to protest and demonstrate in Moravský Krumlov, while the paintings were packed for transportation. The Slav Epic is currently still on display at the National Gallery’s Veletržní Palace until December 2016, after which it may be travelling for exhibitions in Japan and China. Alfons Mucha’s wish that the epic be housed permanently in its own dedicated pavilion in the capital has still not been realised, and the future of the paintings is far from certain. There is nothing quite like the Slav Epic anywhere else in the world; it is a magnificent achievement. Perhaps one day these incredible paintings will finally benefit from the kind of gallery their creator hoped for.  I recently completed The Maintenance Men (detail shown above) which is the second painting I've made with Vic Brooks (see previous blog for an interview with Vic on his working life). The full painting includes seven sitters and can be seen on my Portraits page.
 'Danny' by Tom Johnson I recently read ‘Harry’s Last Stand: How the World My Generation Built is Falling Down, and What We Can Do to Save it’ by Harry Leslie Smith. This is a book I would highly recommend to anyone, particularly those who may feel, like myself, that there are gaps in their overview of recent British history. Harry Leslie Smith was 91 at the time this book went to print. He writes with the voice of authenticity, telling the story of his life from the 1920s up to the present day. He focuses on the social and political changes that have taken place in Britain over almost a hundred years - the period of his life.
One period in particular that Harry touches upon with poignant detail is the era in which my grandparents grew up, the Great Depression of the 1930s. The level of poverty and human suffering in this country during the Thirties makes shocking reading. The Britain that Harry recalls is often a frightening and daunting place. I felt unsettled, not by the grimness of Harry’s account, but by my own ignorance of a time still within living memory. I feel I had a fairly well-rounded state education in the UK but I can’t remember touching upon this period in much detail. I was aware of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 which signalled the Great Depression in the States, but mainly remember learning about the great droughts that occurred during the following decade, sometimes known as the “Dirty Thirties”, and the struggles of the Dust Bowl farmers from John Steinbeck novels which I loved reading from the age of about 15. I certainly don’t remember being taught much about the implications of this economic disaster elsewhere in the world and in Britain, except from what I learnt about my family’s own history and by observing my grandparents’ thrifty and prudent ways, that no doubt had their roots in far more austere times than I or my own generation have ever known. The revelation that I possessed such a blind spot in my understanding of our history has inspired me to read further and hopefully develop a broader picture for myself. This book has highlighted for me some striking parallels between the current prevailing culture of big business, banks and corporations with those equally powerful institutions that dominated in the period immediately preceding the so called Depression of the Thirties. The result of the Crash in 1929 signalled an economic catastrophe that gripped the world for the next decade and had far-reaching repercussions. Learning more about the Crash of 1929 and its crippling effect on ordinary people across the globe, whilst reading recent news stories of corporate greed and high-level tax avoidance, makes me wonder whether lessons were learnt at all. I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between Harry Leslie Smith’s descriptions of being a child in Britain during those destitute years of the Thirties, and my grandfather’s early life. Born only a year apart, Danny Johnson and Harry Leslie Smith had similar experiences. Both boys’ fathers were coal-miners, Harry’s in the coalfields of Yorkshire, Danny’s in the coal-pits of South Wales. Like Harry’s father, my great-grandfather, also Thomas Johnson, found himself among the six million men who were unemployed in this country. Danny, like Harry, experienced tragedy during his childhood, losing his mother at the age of thirteen. He left school a year later and was fortunate to secure a printer’s apprenticeship for the next seven years. Living with a younger brother and a father who remained unemployed for around 15 years, and with no welfare-state to speak of at that time, my grandfather must have felt a heavy burden of responsibility upon his young shoulders. He and his brother Elwyn joined the RAF during the Second World War, as did Harry Leslie Smith. They too must have shared in the collective hope of a new start at the end of that war, improved standards of living and universal health care, even for the least fortunate in society. It was the people of their generation that led the way towards the emergence of a National Health Service in 1948, the formation of the Welfare State as we today know it, based on ideas presented to Parliament in the early Forties by Liberal William Beveridge. Most of us in this country were actually delivered into this world by NHS staff, and our families have enjoyed the safety and benefit of free health-care throughout our lives. It is only through reflection and by developing some understanding of the precariousness of working-class existence in this country before World War Two, that we can grasp what Beveridge meant when he described their plight and the need for reform as an “overwhelming need”. The NHS and the welfare state grew from an enlightened social and civil attitude of responsibility towards our fellow human beings in this country. Harry Leslie Smith expresses this clearly: “The creation of the NHS made us understand that we were in truth our brother’s keeper and that taxation benefits everyone through maintaining not just our roads and sewers but the health of our children, workers and elderly”. Reiterated throughout the book, are Harry’s misgivings that we should forget, or allow ourselves to remain ignorant of the fact that deprivation and poverty was the lot of so many in our land. It is worth remembering that most of the rights we take for granted were gained after a long hard fight. It was through the grit, determination, courage and conviction of thousands of families with histories like my own that brought about these fundamental changes. Reading this book reminded me that we must not become complacent, that we must resist inequality and that we must work against the gross disparity of wealth and power. In ‘Harry’s Last Stand’, Harry Leslie Smith has given us a powerful personal testimony. I’ll end with the words of the folk singer and songwriter Adam McNaughton; the lyrics are from his song ‘Thomas Muir of Huntershill’: “When you're called for jury service, when your name is drawn by lot When you vote in an election, when you freely voice your thought Don't take these things for granted, for dearly were they bought ...”  Recent portrait of Vic Interview with Vic Brooks, Carpenter and Maintenance Man
Vic Brooks was born and brought up on a family farm near the village of Horsmonden in Kent, once a well-known centre of the medieval Wealdon ironworking region. Vic was the middle of six children. His family ran a fruit-growing farm, surrounded by others growing hops and various different crops, as well as farms keeping livestock. In the school holidays, particularly in September and at Christmas, he would get up at half-past five in the mornings and feed the “store cattle” at a nearby farm. These were animals which had been kept indoors to be “fattened up” for six months over the autumn and winter period. Vic also used to bring his family’s two work horses in at night during the summer, as well as their two cows. He remembers that for about a quarter of a mile he would lead the horses along and the two cows would follow on behind. He would feed the animals and wash down the cows so they would be ready for milking in the morning, a duty Vic remembers receiving threepence for. Another job Vic had as a boy was picking up tobacco for the owner of one of the nearby farms: “Every day he had an ounce of Golden Virginia and a pack of cigarette papers and I used to have to go and get his tobacco and find him on the farm, and he used to give me threepence a day for that”. Vic was very athletic as a boy, representing his school when he was eight years old in both the 100 metres and high jump, and in the last year of secondary school, he competed against pupils from Tonbridge School and Judd Grammar and won the pole-vault for his age group in the West Kent Schools county championships. When he started at secondary school he would take the steam engine from the station at Marden to Paddock Wood. When the school rail service first started, he remembers not many children getting the train, but in later years as many as eighty to a hundred children used this service. These stream trains were later replaced with diesel engines and then by electric. Vic took a five year apprenticeship as a carpenter with a company in Paddock Wood called Hall’s, and has stayed in the same profession for the whole of his working life up until the present day. As a young man he had always wanted to work on the farm with the horses, but didn’t realise at the time that by around 1950, the working horses would all be replaced by motorised tractors: “With a horse, you could only plough about one acre a day. With a tractor, and especially nowadays, they do 6-8 furrows at a time, so they could do perhaps 20, 30 acres”. Vic worked at Hall’s for exactly 30 years until he was made redundant in 1992. He joined the maintenance team at Holmewood House school in 1997. He actually first worked at the school while still with Hall’s, putting up some wooden buildings back in 1963, a year he remembers clearly for “the bad snow” that hit Britain. Now in his sixteenth year at the school, he works alongside six other maintenance men on a semi-retired basis for two days a week. He says of working in the team: “They’re good guys to work with. It’s fun, and we all get on; we don’t argue. When you spend more time with your workers or work partners than you do with your own family, you’ve got to get on. We get on well, and they all take the mickey out of me.” This year Vic did a fine job bringing his knowledge and experience of carpentry to replace several large sash windows in the old part of the school. So, what is the key to enjoying a long working life? Vic’s answer: “Doing something you enjoy. If I didn’t enjoy it then it wouldn’t be no good”.  Six years ago I went into a local suit shop to buy one of the duffel coats I’d seen in the window display. I’d never been into the store before, but I’d been thinking about getting a winter coat. It was the Friday before Remembrance weekend in November and I was served by an elderly gentleman called Mr Williams who I guessed must have been in his eighties. He was the manager of the store, and was wearing a silver winged insignia which I assumed must have been from the RAF and he wore a red poppy pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket. He struck me as a bit of a character with a cheeky sense of humour, but he also had a real integrity and calmness about him. He had an accent which I later found out was German.
I asked him whether he would be up in London for the Remembrance service that Sunday and he told me he would be, and that he always took part in the procession through Whitehall to the Cenotaph. He explained to me that he had been in the Parachute Regiment during the war, and that he had lied about his age to get into the force. I remember being very impressed on hearing that for his eightieth birthday he had done a sky-dive for charity. I only found out years later that he had in fact risen to the rank of Colonel. I was very happy with the duffel coat which was a sort of charcoal grey with a light grey tartan lining. Before I left I told Mr Williams that I was a painter and asked him if he would mind if I paint his portrait. He said he wouldn’t mind at all, and so I returned the next day to take some photographs and to make some quick sketches. I was hoping to get the painting finished within a year, but it happened that I was just about to enter into a very busy part of my life, changing between jobs and careers while also being quite busy with commissioned work. I took a PGCE in the next year and then immediately began working full-time running an art department in a local school. Over the next six years I just couldn’t seem to make headway with the painting, either because I was working on a paid commission which had a deadline, or because the amount of school work prevented me from doing so. His kind face spent some time over the next few years in the studio at school, where the pupils regularly asked who he was and why he had so many ties, and he also spent time at my parents' house before taking up residence in the studio/spare room at my flat. Wherever he was, Mr Williams always had an effect on people; his kindly expression seemed to move everyone that saw the painting. When my girlfriend moved in with me, she often commented on how much she liked Mr Williams and that the painting brought a warm presence to the flat. Friends and colleagues frequently asked me: “And how is Mr Williams coming along?” I finally finished the portrait this year. I was understandably a little nervous about taking the picture to the store to see Mr Williams again. I wondered to myself: “What if he doesn’t remember me and wonders why I have a painting of him? What if he hates it?” I went to the store with my girlfriend and was greatly relieved when Mr Williams said to me “So you have finished my portrait!” with a warm smile. He was very pleased with the painting and asked if I would print off a photograph of it for him to show his wife. I said I would of course. He asked me how long this would take. “Not very long”, I told him, "I'll probably be able to get it done this afternoon." “Not in six years then?” he said with a cheeky grin. Judith Johnson recently posted a blog interview with Ralph Williams. To read the blog follow the link below: http://www.judithjohnson.co.uk/ |
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