John Bourne (born 1943) is a British artist and painter, living and working in

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

, and a member of the Stuckists art movement.Milner, Frank, ed. ''The Stuckists Punk Victorian'', p. 118,

National Museums Liverpool National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The museum is a non ...

2004, .

Charles Thomson Charles Thomson (November 29, 1729 – August 16, 1824) was an Irish-born Patriot leader in Philadelphia during the American Revolution and the secretary of the Continental Congress (1774–1789) throughout its existence. As secretary, Thomson ...

's essay, "A Stuckist on Stuckism", pages 6–30, can be found online a
stuckism.com
He founded the Wrexham Stuckists group in 2001
stuckism.com. Retrieved 8 April 2008. and has been exhibited in the group's shows since then, including '' The Stuckists Punk Victorian''."John Bourne"
stuckism.com. Retrieved 8 April 2008. He has also taken part in Stuckist demonstrations against the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...

."Stuckist demos"
stuckism.com. Retrieved 8 April 2008. Click on link for individual years 2003 – 2006. The subject matter for his paintings, which are done in a simplified style, comes from his memories.
welshpaintings.co.uk. Retrieved 8 April 2008.

Life and career

John Bourne was born in Staffordshire,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, and spent much of his childhood in Northern Ireland; his father was a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

minister in the

Yorkshire Dales The Yorkshire Dales is an upland area of the Pennines in the historic county of Yorkshire, England, most of it in the Yorkshire Dales National Park created in 1954. The Dales comprise river valleys and the hills rising from the Vale of York w ...

and passionate about

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

: Bourne says that his earliest memory, aged three, was of his father copying a Van Gogh painting."John Bourne"
,

Walker Art Gallery The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group. History of the Gallery The Walker Art Gallery's collection ...

. Retrieved 8 April 2008. 1964–68, Bourne gained a BSc in Physics at the

University College of North Wales , former_names = University College of North Wales (1884–1996) University of Wales, Bangor (1996–2007) , image = File:Arms_of_Bangor_University.svg , image_size = 250px , caption = Arms ...

, followed 1968–71 by an MPhil (Research on Solid State Theory) at the

Imperial College of Science and Technology Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

and H. C. Ørsted Institute,

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

. He worked as a computer programmer, maths teacher and physics lecturer, until 1986, when "I did a Gauguin but not in the South Seas. I walked out. It was tremendous." He has been a full-time artist ever since then. In 1990, he won first prize in the Mostyn Open 1 competition. In 1991, he staged a solo show at Theatr Clwyd,

Mold A mold () or mould () is one of the structures certain fungi can form. The dust-like, colored appearance of molds is due to the formation of spores containing fungal secondary metabolites. The spores are the dispersal units of the fungi. Not ...

. He has said that the increasing dominance of

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

proved obstructive to his own progress as a painter, and this came to a head in November 2001, when his work was rejected from a local exhibition: he began to despair of getting exposure.Bourne, John
"Stuckism: Paint before concept"
welshpaintings.com, April 2002. Retrieved 8 April 2008. He recalled an article about the Stuckists painting group which had appeared in ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, w ...

'' and responded to them: "I liked the Stuckist Manifesto with its emphasis on painting and artistic integrity. It contained many new ideas and seemed to sum up my disquiet concerning the contemporary art world. Here was a radical, modern movement which championed painting. Some of the artists appeared a little rough and their work at times shocking, but this seemed an advantage if anything." He immediately founded the Wrexham group of the Stuckists art movement, the first group in Wales, along with Elfyn Jones, Neil Robertson and Geraint Dodd. In 2002, he was included in ''The First Stuckist International'' and subsequent shows at the Stuckism International Gallery in London, as well as ''Stuck in Wednesbury'' at the

Wednesbury Wednesbury () is a market town in Sandwell in the county of West Midlands, England. It is located near the source of the River Tame. Historically part of Staffordshire in the Hundred of Offlow, at the 2011 Census the town had a population of 3 ...

Museum and Art Gallery. In 2003, founded the Welsh Stuckism International Centre at his home. From 2003, he took part in Stuckist demonstrations against the

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

. In 2004, he was one of the fourteen "founder and featured" artists in '' The Stuckists Punk Victorian'' held at the

for the

Liverpool Biennial Liverpool Biennial is the largest international contemporary art festival in the United Kingdom. Every two years, the city of Liverpool hosts an extensive range of artworks, projects, and a programme of events. The biennial commissions leading ...

. Bourne was a co-curator, doing work at the museum to arrange the show. Philip Key of the ''

Liverpool Daily Post The ''Liverpool Post'' was a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. The newspaper and its website ceased publication on 19 December 2013. Until 13 January 2012 it was a daily morning newspaper, with the ti ...

'' commented on the exhibition: "And they are not all lacking artistic skills. John Bourne of the Wrexham Stuckists—there are now groups all over the world—paints some well thought-out subdued portraits including the pleasing foursome in Tea at the Albert Dock." Although

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

gallery director, Sir Nicholas Serota was dubbed the "least likely visitor" to the show, which included a wall of work satirising the Tate and Serota himself, such as Stuckist co-founder Charles Thomson's painting, ''

Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision ''Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision'' is one of the paintings that was made as a part of the Stuckism art movement,Cripps, Charlotte"Visual arts: Saying knickers to Sir Nicholas ''The Independent'', 7 September 2004. Retrieved fr ...

'', he did visit, describing the work as "lively",Pia, Simon. "Simon Pia's Diary: Now the Stuckists are on the move", ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its pare ...

'', p. 22, 22 September 2004. Retrieved fro
newsuk
15 March 2008. and meeting Bourne and other artists (see photo). In 2005, Serota rejected the Stuckists' offer of a donation of 160 paintings from the Walker show, because "We do not feel that the work is of sufficient quality in terms of accomplishment, innovation or originality of thought to warrant preservation in perpetuity in the national collection".Alberge, Dalya

''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'', 28 July 2005. Retrieved 1 February 2008. Six of Bourne's paintings were amongst the rejected work. A direct consequence of the rejection was a Stuckist media campaign led by Thomson over the Tate's purchase of its trustee

Chris Ofili Christopher Ofili, (born 10 October 1968) is a British Turner Prize-winning painter who is best known for his paintings incorporating elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists. Since 2005, Ofili has been living and working in T ...

's work, ''The Upper Room''.O'Keeffe, Alice
"How Ageing Art Punks Got Stuck into Tate's Serota"
''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'', 11 December 2005. Retrieved 1 February 2008 This included a demonstration about the purchase outside the

in December 2005, where Bourne handed a protest leaflet to Serota"Turner Prize demo: Sir Nicholas Serota at the demo"
stuckism.com. Retrieved 13 July 2008.—an event which Thomson considers to have precipitated Serota's angry defence of the purchase at the prize ceremony in the evening.Marr, Andrew
"Notebook" (2nd item)
''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'', 7 December 2005. Retrieved 13 July 2008. In 2006 the Charity Commission censured the Tate and ruled that it had broken the law in making the purchase and similar trustee purchases during the previous 50 years.Higgins, Charlotte
"How the Tate broke the law in buying a £600,000 Ofili work"
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', 19 July 2006. Retrieved 1 February 2008 ''

'' called the verdict "one of the most serious indictments of the running of one of the nation's major cultural institutions in living memory."Reynolds, Nigel
"Tate broke charity laws by buying art from its trustees"
''

'', 21 July 2006. Retrieved 22 April 2008. Bourne curated a Wrexham Stuckists show at the Oswestry Heritage Centre,

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

, in 2005. He was one of the artists in the ''Triumph of Stuckism'', a Stuckist painting exhibition which comprised part of

's 2006 programme at Liverpool John Moores University. He lives with his wife in a red-brick terrace in rural Wales, and has two daughters living in London.

Art

Bourne is mostly self-taught. He works in acrylic, oil and ink to produce images, where visual detail is simplified in order to depict memories of both recent life and his Northern Ireland childhood. He said: He describes the genesis of his painting ''Aeroplane'' as a fear of low-flying aircraft and the experience of seeing an aeroplane—which looked like a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Lancaster bomber The Avro Lancaster is a British Second World War heavy bomber. It was designed and manufactured by Avro as a contemporary of the Handley Page Halifax, both bombers having been developed to the same specification, as well as the Short Stirling ...

—coming towards him over the treetops one day. While doing the painting he adjusted the angles in it obsessively "to get it just right".

Gallery

Image:John Bourne. The Milk Float.jpg, ''The Milk Float'' Image:John Bourne. The Amateur.jpg, ''The Amateur''. Image:John Bourne. Domestic Scene.jpg, ''Domestic Scene'' Image:John Bourne. Postgraduates.jpg, ''Postgraduates''

References

External links

John Bourne on Welsh Paintings site

Wrexham Stuckists

Wrexham Stuckists and Stuckism in Wales
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bourne, John Living people 20th-century British painters British male painters 21st-century British painters Stuckism 1943 births English contemporary artists 20th-century British male artists 21st-century British male artists