John Blackburn (2 June 1932 – 22 October 2022) was a British abstract painter, who, after critical success in the 1960s, fell into relative obscurity until the early 2000s.

Life

Blackburn was born in a village outside

Luton Luton () is a town and unitary authority with borough status, in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 census, the Luton built-up area subdivision had a population of 211,228 and its built-up area, including the adjacent towns of Dunstable an ...

and attended the Margate School of Art, where he studied textile design. After school, he served in the

National Service National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. The l ...

(and later lived) in New Zealand, Malaysia, and the surrounding area from 1954 to 1962. In

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

, New Zealand, he met his future wife, Maudie McKinnon. Soon after the couple married, they settled in

Glenfield, New Zealand Glenfield (called Mayfield until 1912) is a suburb, part of the contiguous Auckland metropolitan area. It is located in the North Shore, north of the Waitemata Harbour, and Auckland is located in New Zealand. Demographics Glenfield covers and ...

. It was in New Zealand that Blackburn started painting; he would paint in the garden, having become accustomed to the weather, but then later moved on to the North Shore. His paintings were exhibited at the Circle Gallery in Auckland, which established him as a "radical" painter, with his "simple, reduced strong forms in limited pure, unmixed colours." In 1962, Blackburn, with his wife and three children, returned to Britain, where the influential art collector and gallery owner

Jim Ede Harold Stanley Ede (7 April 1895 – 15 March 1990), also known as Jim Ede, was a British collector of art and friend to artists. Life and career Jim Ede was born in Penarth, Wales, the son of solicitor Edward Hornby Ede and Mildred, a teacher ...

saw his one-man show in London's Woodstock Gallery. Impressed by what he saw, Ede offered Blackburn a place in his Kettle's Yard gallery in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

among artists including

Peter Lanyon George Peter Lanyon (8 February 1918 – 31 August 1964) was a British painter of landscapes leaning heavily towards abstraction. Lanyon was one of the most important artists to emerge in post-war Britain. Despite his early death at the age ...

, William Scott, and Roger Hilton. Soon after, Blackburn's ten-year-old daughter became ill and needed a kidney transplant. Blackburn volunteered, spending six months in intense physical training to prepare for the organ transplantation. The time spent before and after the successful surgery prompted Blackburn to drop from the public eye for a number of years. In 2006, Blackburn had a show at the Metropole Galleries in

Folkestone Folkestone ( ) is a port town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England. The town lies on the southern edge of the North Downs at a valley between two cliffs. It was an important harbour and shipping port for most of the 19th and 20t ...

; his work had not appeared in a commercial gallery since 1968. This led to a revival of interest in Blackburn's body of work as he approached eighty-years old. Blackburn died after a short illness on 22 October 2022, at the age of 90. He was survived by his wife and children.

Work

Blackburn's abstract paintings are held in the private collections of Paul Zuckerman and Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster. In addition, his paintings are housed in university collections across Britain and Ireland, including

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, Newcastle, and Trinity College Dublin. In 2008, he returned to Auckland for a show at the ARTIS Gallery entitled ''The Muriwai Paintings''; this was followed by a show at the Osborne Samuel Gallery and Lemon Street Gallery in London in 2011. A 2012 show entitled ''And God cryed'' at the Studio 3 Gallery in Kent was a critical success.

Style

Blackburn incorporates found objects and materials on his canvases, citing their "previous existence". His paintings utilize

acrylic paint Acrylic paint is a fast-drying paint made of pigment suspended in acrylic polymer emulsion and plasticizers, silicone oils, defoamers, stabilizers, or metal soaps. Most acrylic paints are water-based, but become water-resistant when dry. Depe ...

oil paint Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varn ...

, and encaustic, as well as resin, grit, house-paint, and varnish; according to a review of his 2015 show at the ARTIS Gallery, recent work "rides roughshod over any conventions of neatness and grace, using bold form, often black, and adorning his surface with found objects and collage." Of his own work, the artist says, "I suppose, that’s what my painting’s about; life itself is terribly dangerous, terribly cruel, terribly rewarding. All these things at once. This multi-faceted, wonderful jewel – which we all live with and die with – is there. We’re saddled with it, like it or not."

External links

Artist's website (https://www.johnblackburnartist.com/)
*
Interview with John Blackburn - Studio 3 Gallery

Interview with John Blackburn - Ocula

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blackburn, John 1932 births 2022 deaths 20th-century English painters English male painters 21st-century English painters 21st-century English male artists 20th-century English male artists