John Farrington (artist) Studio Practice: An introduction to his life and work

I went to um Art School Dudley art school in the 50s I wanted to do painting but I was advised to be a book illustrator as they always thought there were more possibility of earning a living as a book illustrator than a painter went out of Art School into the army when I came out of that I then started to paint I got married and I I had to sort of suddenly find out I'd got a family and I had to start having a living so I as a teacher in school in Leicester and then eventually I ended up teaching in a school in shopshire Much Wenlock school and uh that was my teaching career and I spent just just on 30 years doing that but I maned to get early retirement at 55 and then I've painted B us every day since catching up on what I should have done years ago I enjoy the whole process of painting I like the idea of new ideas forming ideas and see them develop on a surface and um hope that the idea goes away from its original visual stimulus and it goes into something that I've created that um I doubt if people would recognize how the original idea began from the finished piece of work in a way apart from sometimes the subject matter is quite obvious I suppose with this you play around with paint you know and you just you have a sort of feeling when it's when the effect what you want is getting near the secret is to leave it alone I've had phases in all sorts of things really I mean this this sort of painting I'm doing now and what I've done the last two years three years is much more illustrative than a lot of the stuff I've done in the past I like telling stories with paint Sometimes using as in this case using using a story that's been around for Gen and generations but I like the idea of the uh the woman biting the Apple if I can I put things down on paper quite soon after thinking of or seeing something and record it that's why I've got so many sketchbooks full of undeveloped work really has never been taken any further when I first lost the eye I was doing this to paint I actually sort of hold on to the brush with my other hand to actually touch the canvas cuz it could judge the distance between the canvas and the brush I think the work has gone flat more decorative and probably more illustrative really going going back to the roots one of the main things with painting isn't it the use of color and I do love the use of color whether it's somber or bright I've been in this studio since 1982 so I bought quite a substantial part of the building over the years this has enabled me to do you know much bigger work and not feel so crammed really with the two rooms you see although I do quite a lot of drawing Preparatory drawing for these things I don't refer to them all that much once I've started it's sort of thing that mols around in your mind eventually go off on a different tangent from the drawing it's completely different thing um I'm bit selfish right I paint I paint for myself I should I should communicate to people but um it's it's not essential part of what I do you know if people are interested and they like it and they um Can tunee into it question it that's that's fine yeah that's the sort of pencil drawing I start with for the initial idea once it starts forming in my mind and usually do a few more based on the same theme in different ways that becomes more of a flat surface decorative drawing and finally I decided to put this woman in which obviously is based on Eve when she bit the Apple all hell that Rose I just think about them and turn them over in my mind really that's that's what I tend to do um these were a series of things I did in the past actually and then i' I've re rethought this idea there just come back into my mind this the chicken man I I don't know where they come from I mean they just they just sort of evolve and there's a I'll just get [Music] this that was one of the early paintings of that theme which I'm going back to again when when I resolve what I'm going to do do one of my first biggest influences were Rous bash really and broal I thought that was too there were men who did things and very often there was no accounting why the hell they did them you know there was no logic no what seemly no sort of logic to what they did in some ways but they they produced the most fantastic pieces of work it's on a no it's not on the door it's part of an old bed [Laughter] it's the um it was the back of what was a piece of two of those made a bed yeah I first started this idea some years ago before four years ago and I did these paintings on it and then I've started dra drawing it again in a different way making the uh figure of the chicken more into this figure of a manand Dres in as a chicken you know certain artists only do one thing really they base their all themes on the figure and they stick to figure painting and they evolve it and evolve it and he goes as opposed to say like Picasso was he was like a gadfly jumped from subject to subject brilliant though brilliant I was I always Picasso a bit dull I've been sunning around a bit it's not the cleanest of places now this was the first one and in in the first part of this was a man taking a chicken to kill him you know for a meal and I just had the one chicken in this the previous ones I I I saw them at chickens just turning into human forms themselves with human heads all looking at the one who was going to be picked up but I think in this one the paint was put on with more Vigor and gave it some a different sort of light or tension in it really I think you do think about um setting an alarm with with various colors I mean van go was the man for that wouldn't he he could he could create all sorts of tens and quite strange sort of things happening there used to be a Slaughter outside bridge and all and I went up there and started sketching it wasn't like this there was none of this but I I put the hooks in there to sort of show that what's going to happen to the poor thing in the end and um they went it went on to be a theme in the in the in The Butchers and slaughterers where I use carcasses as well as as the pigs themselves well when I left school I went to work on a farm and U I was going to be a traine well I was traine dairyman but um up in Wales and I think that you know it comes out in your work really I I do use them a great deal whether it's these or pigs or these pigs in there things like that pigs in a field outside bridge and all but they're not they're not painted like pigs really are they I mean some people paint pigs beautifully and realistically it was just the shapes really on this on this rough ground on this churned up ground I think it's what some people try to sell as happy pork cuz they were out in the [Laughter] mud oh there's a paint well there's two paints at the back there that they're being chucked out by the builders doing some shop fitting in biso this they were painted more or less together yes cuz I the two shop signs came together so I I used them I supposed to goes back to the idea if you look at a lot of Renaissance painting which is now in sort of galleries a lot of it was Furniture panels and you know door panels and things like that they they were inserted into an artifact of some sort and I suppose these using these a little bit like that well it stem from the fact that my brother was drowning the the Scarpa flow he was a diver and um struck me how many trollers used to come onto the ores or be off the ores fishing also it it ties up with the idea of exploiting the sea and taking all the fish out and all you're left with is the spirits of the fish in the sky there this is a Ser of drawings I did for circus in Winter circus actually it's a circus that um a friend of mine used to have on his smaller holding uh for the winter and they used to come and set up uh they set up the tent actually in the winter to practice all the things they were going to do so you got this mixture of a farm and the hill in at the back end which has always been an obsession of mine the hill CLE Hill with the radar station on the top and um these characters used to come up and winter up there in Caravans and um old circus wagons but when they were there you had a strange thing of farm animals and exotic animals all mixed together on on this farm and i' I've been down there on the winters CU they were there from November right through till after Christmas till they went on tour again and um I been there on a really misty November's day driving down this long track to their place and suddenly a camel was coming towards walking up the track and you had things like that and you had a a chap who had all these snakes in the back of a big old Lorry and he used to have to keep them warm with these paraffin eaters all through the win but it certainly um played on my mind when I saw it that's the couple whose Farm it was there was a little painting of those two hanging up here actually they used to sit in a shed Feathering geese for Christmas and they they did inspire me really because they were very very basic people there's a funny story with Sheila because they were always stuff for money this couple and she um I sold a painting many years ago and it was a painting of of the two of them Feathering those geese and when I went up there she said you've sold a painting of us then John and I said well it isn't you really I said it it was just inspired by you to furthering those geese in that shed and she said well I think Bill and I should have a little bit of money for that when in the early days you used to spend a lot of industrial landscape I mean that where I lived in the black country I mean that was the source of M paintings so there's very little in the sense of rural landscape in those days I mean it was just chimney stacks and things like that the only the only pain I've done recently that has that sort of feel to it is that one of the woman with the frogs Yeah when I was a kid yeah she used to get frogs down the B of my garden look through the fence and she had these big drum she keep the frogs in and talk to them and like a trying to make them into Manny so you know the prince and the [Laughter] Frog yeah I can also refer back to things that's the point I've got I've got it I've got it there on paper I can refer back quite a number of years and call things and look back and put them back into a piece of work you're doing or take something from them and add to them that's what I like about it is the fact you you keep this stuff as I say you forget it out of your mind it goes if you don't recorded in some way I know a lot of people use a camera but a lot of these things you can't record them in camera because they they're thoughts and you um they're visual thoughts really but very often it's it's just an instant um instant thing it's like that those people riding through the woods I mean they've ended up as strange Invaders but in act fact he was quite innocent walking through some Woods there were two or three horse riders coming through and probably very nice girls theming on Horseback and then suddenly they've developed into these strange pictures of people on Invaders on horses could be in some sort of ancient armor or and the figures in the foreground the heads the figures looking through the trees the heads on Stakes were all these mythical Woodland creatures um I don't I don't really think you're very conscious of it I think it's as you work you develop different ideas you try to be fresh each time time and not labored and I think if you have one particular technique and one way of doing things that could become a sort of labored thing I hope I'll never get to that stage too much I think you got with the flow of the piece of work you're doing at the present time but underline that there is a there is a stamp of your personality on each piece of work so that that always shows through and that that does make it so that um I suppose it's recognizable you can't you can't evade that I don't think unless you do some something completely different and in a different um medium or consciously try and develop a different style of working or a different way of working I think it's nice to be able to if you look back on work and see that you have evolved over a period of time interest T to be practical in the sense that I do quite a bit of um well I suppose you'd call it DIY but it's necessity that it has to be done I like a certain amount of gardening though we've only got a small garden I certainly like walking and going out into the country I've got an old Land Rover I take out and can go into don't have to worry about being a smart car I can just sort of go into lanes and things that don't really matter that our I suppose as you get older you spend more time with your family in the way grandchildren take up a bit of the time I certainly not never give up painting now at this stage I suppose the other thing is what you know if if you didn't do this what the hell would you do anyway you'd have to do something wouldn't you

Channel: Goldmark Gallery

Views: 36,433

Keywords: John Farrington, Artists, Art, Paint, Painting, Artist (Project Role) Van Gogh, Picasso, Oil, Canvas, Illustration, England, UK, Goldmark Gallery, www.goldmarkart.com, Rigby Graham, Sketch Books, A day in the life, documentary, film, artists film, Drawings, United Kingdom (Country), Person, Educational, History, Studio (Art Subject), Fine Art (Literary Genre), Studio Art (Field Of Study), Fine Art (Industry), What artists do all day?

Id: zpnLaw0ZEok

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Tue May 01 2012