Envelopes and Big Foot

In 1971, Johnny was married with a young family, living in Harrogate, teaching at Harrogate College of Art and painting.  His paintings were being sold at the Nicholas Treadwell Gallery in London and he recalls,  'Nicholas Treadwell was the first guy that took me on - I was with him for about three years.  I never had an exhibition, but he sold everything I sent down.  But,' Johnny emphasises, with a prolonged pause and intense stare, 'I don't want my work to be sold, I want it to be bought!'

This attitude and principal is one that I couldn't understand when I first met Johnny.  Johnny's nearly always hard up, but even in dire straits, he will not sell a painting unless he feels it is going to a good home. In disbelief, I've watched him turn down enquiries to view or buy, because the prospective clients failed the adoption criteria.  End of story.

The  Envelope painting, done in 1971 (see earlier in blog about Johnny's envelopes) was a watershed and the point that Johnny gave himself permission to do and be what he is.  It was an emotionally turbulent, charged period as Johnny tried to manage the tensions between his deeply introspective world and the demands of the exterior one.  He remembers, 'The envelope paintings brought things to a head.  I was painting things I didn't want to paint.  I thought fuck it!  Here we go!  I got all my paintings back from Nicholas Treadwell, gave up my job.  The wife got the house and kids.'  The decisions were not taken lightly and it was a distressing time for all concerned.

His last exhibition was in 1972 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.  'Since then,' he recounts, 'I've exhibited in pubs, furniture shops and where friends have given me space.  The whole point is my undergroundness.  The story of my life is my paintings.'

Last night, Big Foot came up in conversation. (It is still turned to the wall and framing is beginning to feature in the conversation.) 'I think I'm onto something with Big Foot,' said Johnny. 'I've never been able to recreate the envelope - the experience of painting it.  I've been trying to capture it ever since and now, for the first time since, I feel something akin to it with Big Foot.'

'What is the camera focussing on? (Look for the silver corners.) The thing the camera is focussing on is an illusion!'

It seems that some kind of completion/cycle might be going on.  'Big Foot,' says Johnny, 'is the inside of the envelope.  It's your imagination.'


The sayings of Don Juan Quixote
At seventy, my doctor said to me, 'Well Johnny, you can't die prematurely.'