H 

a blurb

about the artist & his art...

Much of his painting takes its strength from an adventure of design in the underlying draughtsmanship; this is especially true of RoadMovies, work that formed the focus of a major exhibition in the summer of 2002 at the Talbot Rice Gallery in the University of Edinburgh, and whose underlying principal - to evoke our passage through landscape rather than just to give 'views' - drives his work still.

This notion of passage was at first concentrated on the idea of driving through landscape in a car but has expanded to include walking or even the experience of a given journey by train - how we see, how we sense where we are & where we're going.  And in an increasing portfolio of portrait drawings shows how this notion of passage is inspiring a certain freedom of likeness that seeks to suggest the sitter's way of moving.

The testimony of the visitors' book at the Talbot Rice was an impressive vote for the sense of joy and relish that his pictures give, of how things either fleeting or everyday can be made the scene of a triumph of joie de vivre.

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The present website has full coverage of recent sketching in Australia and on the Mediterranean, both including portrait drawings - two trips which re-united in August 2004, when he held his first solo show with the Barry Stern Gallery in Sydney, a show to be devoted to journey pictures about the island of Capri.  

There is also a section documenting RoadMovies at the Talbot Rice in 2002; and the tile-like smaller paintings of flowers known by their Swedish name as tjugo-tjugo, or 'twenty-twenty', so named to honour the fact that it was Jonathon's Swedish dealer, Berry Rommedahl, who first commissioned a set of images 20x20cms in format.

The little orange house H at the top of the pages always takes you back to the Home Page, where the full contents are set out for further browsing.

RoadMovie Routes & Themes

The main places that Jonathon's journey paintings describe are the South of France (where he lives in the hills due north of Nice), the valleys of the Tweed in the Borders of Scotland, his native land; the hills of Tuscany and the streets of Florence, where he was married; and more recently, as a result of trips taken in 2003, he plans to draw and paint routes in South Australia, the Blue Mountains and Sydney, as well as Capri.

Moreover, in his RoadMovie compositions, Jonathon sometimes uses many canvases - as many as 51 for the Talbot Rice! - as well as enjoying the challenge of installing a composition for instance round a corner of a room or at a slant up a stairwell...

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Portraits...

Among his portraits are those of children - as well as the cat, Lord Moggy... Usually these are done in graphite, often in ink and sometimes charcoal.  Some are executed in paint sketches and usually Jonathon moves in quick sequences, avoiding too static an angle but working towards an expression of the subject's gestures and physionomy, ruminative or flickering as it may be.

As a mixture of the idea behind RoadMovies and the notion of portrait, are pictures entitled:

...House Portraits

...paintings done to special commission, compliled from sketches taken on visits and designed to express more than a photographic view of the house but the poetry of its setting and garden, its views and approaches...  These also result in ink drawings of exuberant detail and skewness...

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Flower Paintings

These are known as 'Les Fleurs du Bien', a pun on the poems by Beaudelaire entitled Les Fleurs du Mal.  Often the angle of attack, so to speak, is that of the viewer moving down to be close enough to sniff the flowers there in the vase.

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Sculptures called Anouskas

Once upon a time Jonathon made a get-well card for a sweetheart's child by cutting two panels of foamboard into the shape of a vase of flowers, each panel having slots so that they could be interlocked; then this freestanding sculpture was given the girl's name, Anouska. The name stuck. Ever since, he has made one-off sculptures, some larger than others, mainly in painted panels of mdf, usually of flowers, while the idea is also beginning to expand into furniture. 

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&c  &c  &c

The site also has links to chapters devoted to Jonathon's work on stage and his photography and writing.  Most notably as a writer he appeared every month for over a year in the BBC Music Magazine in a regular feature as 'The Artist at the Opera', looking at instances of artists designing stage sets... and has given two interval talks on BBC Radio Three.

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Scrollish drawing of the road from Bar-sur-Loup to the sea...

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