ARTS
POP CULTURE
Y
Bath artist Jason Dorley-Brown on photography, potholes, and pansies By Sarah Moolla
ou may not recognise him but Jason Dorley-Brown has been responsible for many of Bath Life’s most striking covers including the collectors’ issue of five pop art historical figures from Bath back in March 2018. Jason, who is not quite born Bath but definitely bred, tells us about his career path that includes a Bath bar, a London darkroom, and discovering his artistry later in life.
Hi Jason, first tell us a little about your Bath upbringing..
I lived on Highbury Place, between Camden and Snow Hill through my years at Beechen Cliff school. I left school after taking my ‘O’ levels and started working at Sweeney Todd’s as a kitchen hand. I became the bar manager before moving to Evelyn and Owens, eventually becoming the bar manager there. It was pretty much the only ‘cocktail’ bar in Bath and many a story, both notorious and hilarious (especially about the Happy Hour) are still being told to this day. I look back fondly on my time at E&O’s, and still remain tight friends with many of the people I worked with there.
other without the constant replays of the towers collapsing. Anyone who has visited New York prior to this period, will know that one of the constants is the sound of car horns blaring as traffic lights turn green. That stopped after 9/11. When did you first start painting?
I spent a week in Barcelona in 2006, with my future wife, and was struck by the use of mainly primary colours in art and advertising. I am attracted to mainly the abstract and Jean Miro’s art was, and still is, an inspiration. I started painting on my return to the UK. Did you like art at school?
I have to admit that my school days were not amongst my happiest. There wasn’t much parental control or support so I was fairly wild. I studied photography at school but have never had any formal education in art. You came relatively late to the prospect of being an artist then?
Have you always worked in Bath?
I worked for a company in London that finds and supplies audiences for TV shows. The Graham Norton Show, Ready Steady Cook and the wonderful music show The White Room among many others. I also owned and ran my own black and white photographic darkroom, Browns, in London in the late 1980s through to the mid 1990s.
“We filled three or four potholes with compost and pansies”
What was a career high?
Probably the best job I ever had was in New York. In 1996 I was offered a job as a manager of the top colour and black and white photo lab in NYC. I was there two weeks later on a tourist visa (naughty!) but quickly had a work visa. I lived in an apartment in midtown Manhattan and worked two blocks from home. Working with the top fashion photographers, fashion houses, and magazines was wonderful and I was living an incredible life. That all ended on 11 September 2001. What was that like, being in New York during 9/11?
You would need an entire issue for me to talk about that time. I will say that my decision to stay and be a part of the healing process in anyway I could was the most important decision I have ever made. New Yorkers came together with compassion and empathy. It was remarkable to see TVs in bars turned off so that people could talk and support each
38 I BATH LIFE I www.mediaclash.co.uk
I had never considered myself an ‘artist’ until very recently! I always used art as a creative outlet. My creative process has been a tool to gain and maintain good mental health. It was only when I created a website as a library for my images that my friends and my wife suggested that my work was good enough to show, and so I did. When did you actually start calling yourself an artist?
After receiving a mainly positive reaction from my first couple of shows and with my wife’s incredible support, we decided I should concentrate on my art. This was in 2015. I now have the confidence to describe myself as an artist.
How do you like to create?
Being a photographer and artist is a very solitary life. Saying that I have always loved collaboration and I try and work with other creatives whenever possible. So you will either find me wandering with a camera, or camera phone in hand, or I will be at home editing or creating on my Mac. Music is a huge part of my personal and creative life. Music creates mood. It can inspire and energise and is one of the greatest tools that I rely on to bring something positive to the creative process. Who were your early influences?
I would say that Ellsworth Kelly, Piet Mondrian, Jean Miro and Francis Baudevin and Andy Warhol are my art influences. In photography