Born in Chelsea in 1948, John Percy spent much of his childhood in Kent and began painting at 14. He was influenced by his father, a Northumberland coalminer who had become an animator during the Second World War, then a technical illustrator in the Admiralty. Though he continued to paint, John studied graphic design at Ravensbourne College of Art, graduating in 1967, and worked as an animator before turning to painting full-time in 1989.
A child of the postwar era who came of age as an artist in the 1960s and 70s, John’s work explores the “disorderly-order” that surrounds us and depicts the “continual struggle between necessary order and desirable anarchy” that courses through modern, complex societies. His canvases are full of tensions: formal grids underpin semi-planned arrangements of colour – sometimes swept onto the canvas thickly, sometimes poured. Paint bleeds into the paint, as if accidentally. Strong verticals suggest an enigmatic division of the canvas that may or may not be regulated. “Choice and Chance” are the dominant processes at work, their innate tension resolved in the sensations, feelings and moods provoked in the mind of the viewer.
John’s work is unashamedly abstract and recalls the progressive ideals of modernism; and John himself is unashamedly a painter, working with authenticity in a ‘traditional’ medium that offers him an antidote to the modern world’s insatiable impulse towards novelty. In this, his work drives towards something more ‘real’ and permanent than the consumerised objects that surround us, and it is simultaneously a critique of modern life and a celebration of the expression of personal feeling.
John himself likens his work to music and himself to a composer, arranging paint rather than sounds “in a certain order to achieve harmony, rhythm and melody”. You might also see in his paintings an analogy with his other passion – cycle racing: every painting is a journey pushed on by the urgent physicality required to make a definitive statement. What remains on the canvas is a record of the journey just completed and the stillness that accompanies arrival at journey’s end. His paintings are indeed “contemplative objects”.
For almost ten years from 1989, John practised his art as his living and developed the almost purely abstract style that we see today. He exhibited widely and sold well. Then, in 1998, he stopped painting abruptly, returned to work as a graphic designer and gave his free time to cycle racing, first as a rider then as a coach.
The unplanned hiatus lasted 15 years. In 2012 he retired and returned to his original passion, driven by the need to complete the expression of his singular and necessary vision of the world. “I paint,” he says, “because I still find it exciting. I paint abstracts because my mind works that way. It seems like the natural thing to do.”
(Intro – Simon Wicks, writer and journalist)
Self-taught or art school?
Both, I’m an art school trained as a graphic designer and self-taught as a painter. I started painting in oils when I was 14, then left school at 16 to train at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design in Bromley as a graphic designer because I have a working-class background and I knew I would need to get a job, the idea of being a painter didn’t seem practical at that time. But by 1967 when I left college at 19 I knew I definitely wanted to be a painter and should have done a fine art course. This presented a problem as I had already had a grant and my local council refused another one. I lazed about for a while, just painting and didn’t look for any jobs until my father got fed up and pushed harder. Using one of his old wartime contacts I got a job in Film and TV animation & graphics but continued painting for myself until 1970. I stayed in Animation until 1989 and enjoyed it although I had started painting again in 1985.
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
“Long Cadmium with Cerulean in Violet” by Patrick Heron 1977. There are many others of course but you only ask for one.
How would you describe your style?
Abstract of course but over the years it has developed and changed quite a bit, nowadays it is more gestural using thinner paint but I have always painted in layers which I allow to dry rather than work wet in wet. For that reason paintings often take months and I try to work several at once.
Can you tell us about your artistic process?
Many years ago after art school, it was always linked to a subject. I could plan these and draw them onto canvas and paint the whole thing in one go. That stopped when I stopped painting in 1970. In 1985 when I started again I painted at first in a conventional style from life. That was mainly just to see if I could do it. But I soon started painting abstracts again, the period 1985-89 sees me trying out all kinds of things. Late in 1988, I hit on a new style for me. It involved painting in layers but trying to preserve something of the history with each layer. I used a textured paper if I wasn’t using canvas and dragged paint with a palette knife or rollers or printed blocks of colour, initially using shapes but quickly moving into using the grid and geometric forms to get away from visual references. These paintings often had a surface heavy with impasto, the paint could get quite thick with texture as the layers built up. This style developed quite quickly through the 1990s until I stopped painting in 1998 then started again in 2013 continuing until 2017 when I began to feel the need for a change. I took the winter off and just did fast sketches from the TV in my sketchbook with watercolour markers. In the new year of 2018, I started to develop the sketches into gestural paintings called the dance series using thinner paint with brushwork, abandoning the knife, rollers and printing but still working in layers which I needed to do to keep colour clean.
So that’s where I am now. Through Lockdown I have been conscious that the dance series is finite and I would need to return to pure abstract work at some point. The dance series is “abstraction” in that I watch and refer to dancers dancing for imagery while a pure abstract is painted straight out of my head without any visual reference. So the work through Lockdown has been pure abstract and has been called “Experitests” because that is exactly what it is, I’ve been trying out different things and working up in scale and media. I am now ready to return to working on a larger scale on canvas. The last two such paintings have titles expressing a certain philosophical approach.
To sum up my abstract process then, I start by setting up a starting point, then it’s a series of choices and decisions, choices of the next colour from what’s available and relating to what has gone before, then a decision as to how I’m going to place that colour, with what tools, and where. The next layer proceeds in the same way and the next choice of colour is guided by the previous. Eventually, I will know I’ve got to the end and then I introduce an element of chance, more dangerous than the accidental chance events that may have happened on the way. This is to pour paint in a gestural way. I know what colour I’m pouring, I know where I’m trying to put it, but what happens when it hits the canvas and whether it turns out as intended is down to chance, something we all have to contend with at some point.
Is narrative important in your work?
I don’t tell stories but narrative as a philosophical reflection on life is important. I have referred to my paintings as “metaphors” meaning I see the process described above as a metaphor for the way we live. We all have our starting points, and I’m thinking of “Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions” here, an important consideration in Chaos Theory. The starting point affects the direction. After that its all choice and decision from options available, which is all very well but then chance events can and will have huge effects on our lives. This is the narrative in my paintings through the process, whether it’s Metaphor series, Dance series or Experitests, the metaphor is always there.
Who are your favourite artists and why?
Now there’s a long list. When I was 14 it was Renoir’s early work, i loved the brushwork. I also enjoy Velasquez, Manet and Lautrec. In art school in was Jean (or Hans) Arp and Mondrian, very different but both important. The American Abstract Expressionists have a strong place in my mind, particularly Rothko, Barnet-Newman, Pollock and Motherwell. I then discovered Patrick Heron in the 1970s and then looked harder at Matisse. Pat Heron popped back into my life with his 1985 exhibition at the Barbican. In 1989 I saw Sean Scully’s work in his exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery and I was so bowled over by the force of those paintings that it took a year to work him through my system. There are others but these spring to mind as the most important and they have all had a cumulative effect
What or who inspires your art?
See above. It comes out of my head, life inspires it.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
I have a studio at home which is the largest bedroom, 12x14ft, it has one painting wall, 2 desks with a computer, printer, scanners and whatever else I need, shelves above store archives and records, There is a workbench supplemented by a drawing board on a workmate and a plans chest with paintings stored above. I painted all my work from 1988-2013 here until I acquired another studio in Maidenhead for 2 years.
I now also have a studio in Reading which is a more serious painting studio used specifically for that. It’s about 3.5 sqm with 3 useful white walls and high ceilings. It’s part of a larger space that I share with another artist at Openhand Openspace (OHOS) in the Keep of Brock Barracks.
Do you have any studio rituals?
Not really, I go in, I put on my overalls, I make a coffee, I have a think and then I get on with what I need to do.
What are you working on currently?
I need now to restart the dance series with the next dance title and also carry on in parallel with the Experitest series as larger oil on canvas paintings with more individual titles.
Where can we buy your art?
You can only buy my work directly from me at the moment. The best thing is to contact me via my website at https://johnpercy.co.uk regarding anything you may be interested in. Otherwise, I sell at exhibitions or open studios.
In life our starting points are set by our genes and cultural or social environment. In painting, I create a metaphor for this process. The starting point is the blank canvas which I might disrupt with offcuts of canvas laid in a rhythmic sequence before priming, or it could be an early decision to use a certain palette or set up a formal grid or both. From that starting point, and within that framework, both life and painting become a series of choices and decisions which determine direction. Chance events or mistakes can and will happen, contributing to, or completely changing, that direction. Process and progression are important. Entropy points to the inevitable progression into disorder of all things and the sequence of events progressing to the end.
Since 2018 I have looked at dance to carry the metaphor and introduce more gestural movement into my work. I think about ballroom dancing in particular as a social activity often elevated to high levels of athletic and artistic performance. In a dancehall, two strangers can come together, neither knowing anything about the other, there are strong elements of choice, decision, chance, control, improvisation and spontaneity. It takes two to dance, a binary interaction requiring partnership, cooperation and teamwork. It has pace, flow, rhythm, colour and mood. It is the physical interpretation of music through athletic performance, beauty and grace in action. These are elements that have always been in my paintings and will continue.
As I find myself in the middle of the dance series I realise it is finite and am looking to begin pure abstraction again in parallel with the remaining dance series paintings. During Coronavirus and Lockdown, I have been pursuing a series of “experitests” which have enabled me to find a gestural way of painting pure abstracts. The idea of the metaphor remains but the methods have changed.
There is a strong parallel between abstract painting and composing music. The composer makes an arrangement of sounds, varying in pitch and tone, arranged in a certain order to achieve harmony, rhythm and melody. The only place it can originate is in the composers head, in his imagination. In painting, we use marks and colours for sounds. Harmony and rhythm are still essential formal ends to achieve and meaning exists in the intention of the artist or composer and hopefully in the eye, ear and intellect of the viewer or listener.
Ultimately I aim to make paintings that must stand in their own right and are not pictures of something. Works that are enigmatic, contemplative objects, carrying a certain poetic power and, at the same time, something that is a statement of personal ideals and an expression of my sense of the orderly disorder around us, the continual struggle between necessary social order and desirable personal anarchy.
