Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 27, 2024: John Greenwood, a British painter, illustrator (#2009)

Saturday, April 27, 2024

Artist of the Day, April 27, 2024: John Greenwood, a British painter, illustrator (#2009)

John Greenwood (1959) was born in Leeds, He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1990, where he received the Cite Internationale Paris residency award, the Burston Award and the Midland Bank purchase award.

Following a career break, recent shows have included; a solo show, ‘Being John Greenwood’ in 2014, curated by Juan Bolivar at the C+C Gallery, London and group shows in 2015, ‘Doppelganger’, No Format Gallery, London, ‘Tutti-Frutti’, Turps Gallery, London, ‘Anti-Social Realism’, Charlie Smith, London, ‘Present Tense’, Swindon Art Gallery and Museum and the ‘2nd Nanjing International Art Festival, Nanjing, China.

In 2015 John; won the Bronze Award at the 2nd Nanjing International Festival, had a residency at the C+C Gallery, London and an article ‘John Greenwood’, published in the Autumn Turps Magazine.

In 2016 John took part in ‘El Dorado’ curated by Juan Bolivar at Horatio Junior Gallery, London and Geraint Evans’, ‘The Abject Object’ at Wimbledon College of Art. He was also a finalist in the Marmite Art Prize.

In Autumn 2016 John will have a one man show at the Turps Gallery, London. He will take part in Frances Woodley’s show at the Bay Gallery, Cardiff, ‘Models and Materialities’ and Rosalind Davis’ ‘Telling Tales’ at the Collyer-Bristow Gallery, London.

Looking at John Greenwood’s paintings feels rather like staring into a cell, a place of confinement, open on one side only—the viewer’s. These are paintings of species and spaces that beggar belief. ‘I like it sometimes that I create a believable illusion of something that has never existed.

Greenwood is inspired, in part, by Cotán’s bodegóns, 17th century Spanish still life paintings with parabolic hangings of cabbages, melons, weird carrots and threaded sparrows. Cotán, for Greenwood, is king of a heap composed of many other still life painters: de Heem, Ruysch, Coorte, Kalf and Chardin to name but a few. Cotan is, he says, ‘the stubborn avocado stone that refuses to be integrated into this mush.’

Greenwood is an unapologetic raider of other people’s paintings. There is a combative streak to him: he wants to be ‘king of the compost heap’. To his mind, art of the past must be fermented and feasted upon to bring nourishment to his own. And what a mush of things and qualities lie buried there: things that hang, overflow, ooze, bulge, and glisten; lunar cheeses, velvet peaches and barnacled bread. None, however, appear directly in Greenwood’s paintings. Instead they await transformation in the heat of the ferment. Only then do glass vases in the floral still lives of de Heem and Ruysch emerge as ‘objects that have observable internal spaces, viewable through glass, crystal, or inflated transparent membranes’. Observable maybe, but also, perversely inaccessible.

Through the use of one point perspective and impeccable painting technique Greenwood imprisons his symmetrical creations in confined and claustrophobic spaces. In doing so he brings a mixture of humour and pathos to their pointless wrigglings and fumblings, squashings and balloonings. ‘Will they fall flat, dilate, deflate, or dissolve?’ Amusing speculation for the viewer perhaps, but underlying their absurdity there is also a sense of outrage rumbling away.

There is no window onto the world in these interiors. There is no light source from without or within other than that provided by the artist himself. No other world is implied or invited in; it is a world of a singular imagination. As such, Greenwood’s highly personal, obsessive and absurdist practice recalls the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch or Yves Tanguy, the animated films of Jan Švankmajer, or the sculpture of Cathy de Monchaux.

Greenwood’s process is ‘pre-verbal, or sub-verbal’ he suggests, but behind such a modest claim there would seem to lie an inconsolable imagination being put into play.

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