John Wilkinson - Artist

The paintings, news and exhibitions of a Sheffield UK artist creating sequential narratives in response to a world in perpetual flux. Contact me to arrange a studio visit (email and PM only)

As an artist I am fascinated by the relationship between us and our environment, how we have shaped it, and it has shaped us, and the unavoidable signs of this symbiotic process that litter our landscape. Living in a northern industrial city in a post-industrial climate, set In a wild and ancient landscape, the inexorable process of decay and reshaping that characterises the world of nature seems to have spilled over into the city, as the old falls out of use, decays, and is finally torn down as the city restructures itself.

I portray my world with paint. The medium is as important as the result; the tactility of paint being a key part of the process of communicating our reactions to living in the extremely tactile urban environment. The qualities of paint lend themselves well to our expression - it is both social and anti-social, angry and patient, bright and subdued, celebratory and critical. Paint draws it's colours from the earth that humanity has trampled, manipulated and shaped to form the subjects I portray. My palette is drawn from the moors, crags, peaks and edges that surround me, and dominate the industrial and social history of the area. The ochres, Sienna's and umbers of the rocks, the purples of the heather and the blues of the ever changing sky merge with the ossified stone, the concrete dust, hard baked clays and iron oxides of the abandoned remains of Sheffield's industrial past, and are threatened by the brighter hues of the emerging post industrial environment.

As I walk around the city, it is still the past that dominates. Perhaps like the 18th century sublimisists it's the process of change that sits heavily, and influences my response, or perhaps it's the soullessness of the new, as yet to acquire a social history. For it is the social element of the environment that draws me. These were factories, machines and houses that provided employment, assistance and to people, and which themselves arrived as a result of the unique geography and resources of the surrounding area. The industrial urban environment drew in people from the rural areas, and community developed in the noise, heat, dirt and danger of the factories, forges and mines. It was this that De Loutherberg portrayed with horror (Coalbrook Dale by night), and which is itself being swept away. As the old communities that grew up around it die, a new post industrial landscape, yet to acquire its sociality, emerges. No romantic, I have no illusions of the reality of a dirty, smoky industrial past. Nevertheless, it's loss has devastated the lives of many around me, and continues to do so as the new economics leave little opportunity for the human or material remnants of the past. My urban expression is informed by a sense of regret for the vacant space, both physical and social, that is decaying, and a disquiet about the shiny new and soulless that is growing around me.