John Worth
Multidisciplinary painter and photographer, exploring the vibration, rhythms and musicality inherent in nature, places and urban environments.
MessageStudio: Lewes, UK
1961: Born UK
1989-92: BA Hons, Photography, Film, Video & Animation, West Surrey College of Art & Design (now University College for the Creative Arts)
1994-2018: Digital media entrepreneur and business owner
2017: Began painting
2019: Debut solo exhibition (Lewes UK)
2019: Became a full-time multi-disciplinary artist working primarily with painting and photography
Statement
Multidisciplinary artist inspired by the vibration, rhythms and musicality inherent in nature, places and urban environments.
John studied Photography at West Surrey College of Art & Design, 1989-92 (now the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham).
He takes inspiration from repeated daily walks in the landscapes he chooses to underpin his artistic interrogations. In each place, by repeating the same journey each day, taking photos as he goes, he develops an intimate connection with the spaces.
The results are paintings that pay homage to the synergies and rhythms he discovers in the contours of the landscape combined with the abstract qualities of the textures, light and shadow as they change through the seasons.
Music: Both walking and in the studio, music is important to his creative process; abstract paintings blend the sense of musicality he feels in the landscape itself with the landscape of his own heart and mind.
Some pieces are based on the five lines of a musical stave, suggesting the two experiences of music and land superimposed upon each other, generating unique sets of rhythms and vibrations.
A preoccupation with traces, fragments, exposure and erasure all work to pose a question about identity.
Process: A habit of producing daily sketches enables an immediate translation of his visceral experiences; a way of responding to the energies in the landscape; an occasion to witness the rhythmic and chaotic narrative of nature as it changes.
John’s work speaks to the tradition of lyrical abstraction. Many paintings are suggestive of surfaces aged by the passage of time. He builds these surfaces using his own techniques that include layering strips of linen or canvas and overlaying in mixed media, scratching and sanding back multiple times, resulting in a patina that suggests both the action of time and multiple stories interacting.
Textures and touch: As a way of countering the over-saturation with screen-based images, John is increasingly concerned with the finished painting as a physical and tactile artefact. Many of his pieces invite touch, recalling the visceral inspiration of their beginnings, and finished with a wax varnish to enable this type of engagement.
Multidisciplinary artist & photographer
© John Worth, Artist 2023