John Lendis Autumn
John Lendis
A collection of new paintings inspired by the Cotswolds landscape
Gallery Opening: October 19th 2024, 3pm
All paintings available to purchase upon receipt of this catalogue
62 High Street, Broadway, Cotswolds, WR12 7DT
Art@TheStratfordGallery.co.uk
01386 335 229
Autumn
Here, a small group of paintings and drawings worked on over the last year, reflecting the Cotswolds landscape. The landscape I have been immersed in for the last 15 years or so.
Thematically the works portray this unique landscape, although they are driven largely by an emotional response rather than a simple copy.
It is emotion and intuition that transforms the initial image during the process of painting, allowing the image to emerge naturally out of the painting rather than being imposed externally. I naturally paint and draw in whatever ‘style’ happens to occur to me at the time, I spent many years studying painting techniques but I have found that when I combine the looseness and immediacy of mark making with a more controlled, restrictive method of working I come closest to achieving my goals.
The works reflect my interest in setting up multiple visual spaces on a single canvas in order to blur and divide time and space, to collapse and collide different perspectives. Elements in the paintings are allowed to exist side by side in different aspects of time and space. A space where pictorial combinations such as the use of perspective along side a more ‘medieval’ flat pictorial space can occur. Such juxtapositions can deny the viewpoint of the observer in contrast to a more classical perspective which, while being effective in rendering landscapes, somehow tends to ‘freeze’ a viewer to a point of singularity.
This is something I do unconsciously, often not really knowing why except that I find it pleasing.
To account for the experience of looking, a painting should deeply involve an observer.
John
Lendis October 2024
Drawing
Beast
I, Acrylic & Ink on Hahnemuele Paper, 78 x 108 cm (unframed size) 94 x 119 cm (framed size)
Beast with Land Rover, Oil on Canvas, 80 x 110 cm (unframed size) 86.5 x 116.5 cm (framed size)
Unseen, Acrylic & Ink on Hahnemuele Paper, 74.5 x 102.5 cm (unframed size) 97.5 x 124.5 cm (framed size)
Travelling with the wind II, Oil on Canvas, 61 x 122 cm (unframed size) 65.5 x 121.5 cm (framed size)
Near Hatherop, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 114 cm (unframed)
Stag with Broadway Tower, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 114 cm (unframed size) 74.5 x 118.5 cm (framed sized)
Once there were wolves, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 114 cm (unframed size) 74.5 x 118.5 cm (framed size)
Coming Storm / Early Snow (small), Oil on Canvas, 70 x 114 cm (unframed)
Market Town with Foxes, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 114 cm (unframed)
Two Foxes, Oil on Canvas, 70 x 114 cm (unframed size) 74.5 x 118.5 cm (framed size)
Coming Storm / Early Snow, Oil on Canvas, 61 x 122 cm (unframed size) 65.5 x 126.5 cm (framed size)
About the artist
John Lendis is an internationally collected artist born in Nottingham in 1950. John initially studied textile design at Nottingham University, after which time he moved to Sydney, Australia where his work is still exhibited and collected today. He then went on to complete a BA and MA in Fine Art at the University of Tasmania.
Having moved back to the UK some 15 years ago, his paintings blend the wealth of richness from his various life experiences, allowing the viewer to take journeys between what is real and what is imagined. Today, John is based in the Cotswolds.
Recurring themes in John’s work include journeys, fantasy and folklore, indecision, our relationship with the natural world as well as our interior and exterior selves. His paintings blend loose and urgent brushwork with exquisite attention to detail, yielding many questions and thus a lifetime of interest in each piece. His works form emotional connections with their owners instantly through the almost dream-like quality of John’s scenes
Throughout his impressive artistic career, which spans over 50 years, John has endeavoured relentlessly to create paintings that speak of experiences that struggle to be described or decorated with words. His path has seen him take many turns exploring the world through every type of physical landscape. His travels to both the most intensely populated cities of the world, as well as the furthest and most remote uninhabited locations have all
left their fingerprint in his mind’s eye. Catalysts perhaps to his hard won symbols and motifs that call to us from the surface of his paintings. At this stage in his career, he finds himself drawn to creating works around the most magical wildlife from this area past and present; foxes, hares, wolves and now the some what more mysterious ‘Beast’.