Notes from underground

He rarely gives interviews, describes himself as something of a nomad and had he not preferred his own company could have been the toast of the art world. Gillian Tarn meets reclusive Yorkshire artist John Middleton.

John Middleton has never been the kind of artist to bow to peer pressure. When he has an exhibition, he doesn’t much go in for glitzy opening nights and, at 72, he is unashamedly a creature of habit.

We meet in his Harrogate studio, where he can still be found each day, painting to a strict discipline. He is the kind of man other less disciplined artists could set their clocks by.

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“I am at work,’ he says, “it’s my business. I am in my studio every day – even if I’m not painting – I wash brushes, sit in my chair – stare at the walls.”

The Sheffield-born artist also has no intention of retiring from a calling that began during his childhood in Rotherham. His studio is stacked with works that amply sum up a diverse career: beautifully crafted landscapes of Yorkshire and Europe; life drawings; dramatic self-portraits and his first love: intriguing abstracts.

Given his roots, artist wasn’t an obvious calling. The back-cloth to his birth in 1940 was industrial Sheffield, cast in the shadow of the Second World War. With his father away at war, the first seven years of John’s life were spent with his mother’s family in the village of Wortley, set in picturesque countryside just outside the city.

At the end of the war, John met his father for the first time and the rural idyll was immediately replaced by the grim reality of life in Dalton, on the outskirts of Rotherham; a hard working, harsh environment, where most lads’ futures lay down the coal mine or at the steel works and not in lofty halls of learning. In that stark reality, John’s independent nature was fostered.

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“My father didn’t give me much,” John reminisces, “but he had a room full of books – all early English watercolours and I used to go and look at them. They were an escape from my reality – which wasn’t too good. I was 10 and beginning to be aware, without understanding why, that for some reason, I didn’t fit in.”

The family moved to Bridlington when John was 13 and during the turbulence of the breakdown of his parents marriage, his constant companion and escape was his developing passion for art. By 16, John was captivated by the Impressionists and their vivid world. “Artists were portrayed leading wonderful lives of romance and being hard-up and I wanted to be part of it. I knew I wasn’t going to find it in the Bridlington of the late Fifties, so I moved to Leeds and the West Indian community in Chapeltown – my first fascinating taste of a vibrant, different culture.”

He survived by labouring on building sights, painting in every spare moment and visiting galleries to study the works of artists. The misfit boy who hated school was transforming into the man who uses his paintings to try and make some sense of it all.

In the late 1960s, John had settled in Harrogate and was on his way to establishing a reputation in the contemporary art world and as well as exhibiting, he was also teaching and lecturing. However, by 1972 he was struggling to manage the tensions between mounting, external career pressures and his deeply introspective self. Contemporary art was moving away from the influences of painting and drawing, both of which are fundamental disciplines for John and he eventually withdrew from the outside world to devote himself entirely to painting without compromise.

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Describing his creative development, John explains, “I value the discipline and craft of landscape and portrait work – that’s how I began – through direct observation and painting but it is through my abstracts that I find my expressive soul.”

John says he feels a close connection with primitive painters: the cave painters of our past; the tribal artists of today. He goes on, “Our ancestors ventured deep into caves to make marks and express something – something spiritual, I believe. Why go to all that trouble to draw down a black underground hole, where no-one will venture without a struggle? I feel a connection with those mark makers. It doesn’t make any sense but it is what I do, what I am. Both my grandfathers were underground – miners. Maybe that’s why I’m underground too,” he laughs.

The only reason he has agreed to be interviewed now is that he spotted an old archive photograph of himself in the Yorkshire Post. It had been taken in 1983 just as John was planning to leave his comfortable life in Yorkshire to life on £8 a week in India. As it turned out, it was one of many adventures which informed his style of painting.

“Those were inspired by my trip to the Yucatan Peninsula. I am intrigued by pyramids and early artists. I use many of their techniques in my paintings – this here,” he says, pointing to a zigzag border. “Is the way the ancient Egyptians expressed water.

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“I have been told that I do not see things the ‘right way’, that I am deluded. Maybe I do see things differently but that is not to say wrongly – one man’s reality is another’s delusion perhaps. Art has given a purpose to my life. It has been a magical thing. Some people never experience that depth of absorption that cancels your whole being.”

John has travelled off the beaten track around many countries in Europe, drawn to, amongst other places, the temples of Greece. “I’ve never stopped learning and wanting to experience. I went to Amsterdam in 1983, where I lived in an attic for six months and then on a houseboat on the Amstel. I painted the canals and studied water. I returned to Harrogate, where I’ve lived ever since.”

In early 1993, John was commissioned, by Harrogate’s Gallery Emeritus, to make a tour of Spain and Portugal and record the journey in drawings and watercolours, for an exhibition on his return. John’s wanderings lead him to the remote, mountainous Beja region of southern Portugal. His mounting fascination led him to accept an offer to rent a stone and mud house in this sparsely populated region, known locally as the Pampa. For a year, he experienced and painted life from another age, where the inhabitants used farming methods little changed from medieval times.

Further afield, he has visited the Mayan temples of Mexico and lately, the Buddhist temples of Thailand. “Even though I’m something of a nomad,” John says. “I always return to Yorkshire – it’s only when I’m here that I can reflect on my experiences there.”

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John is currently focused on preparation for exhibitions in 2013, encompassing his creative life-time, with plans to exhibit in Yorkshire and in London.

“‘Each painting is an expression, which is unique to the circumstance of the artist. A painting is not simply the final image: it becomes a companion intimately associated in its own birth; a vessel which holds the story of the bond between creator and created. Without the story, the painting is empty.”