Biography
Left
teaching for art, lives in a red brick terrace house in rural
Wales, loves motorways and supermarkets. Grateful
to his wife Joyce for her unflinching support. Plays chess obsessively.
Two daughters living in the Barbican and Shepherds Bush - "I
love visiting them there." Goes jogging in the hills round Caergwrle
Castle. Paints in the loft. Practises a combination of self-taught
Zen Buddhism and informal Christianity. His father was a Methodist
minister in the Yorkshire Dales and crazy about Van Gogh. "My
earliest memory was of my father copying a Van Gogh painting.
(I was three)". Bach and Dostoyevsky fan.
27.7.43 Born Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, much of childhood
in Northern Ireland
1955-64 Llanrwst Grammar School, North Wales. Shrewsbury Technical
College
1964-68 University College of North Wales, Bangor, BSc (Physics)
1968-71 Imperial College of Science and Technology and H.C.Oersted
Institute, Copenhagen, MPhil (Research on Solid State Theory)
1971-72 Computer programmer, engineering draughtsman Conway
Valley Water Board
1972-78 Maths teacher Ysgol Dyffryn Conwy (secondary school),
Llanrwst, North Wales
1978-86 Physics lecturer, North East Wales Institute of Higher
Education, Wrexham
1986 "I Did a Gauguin but not in the South Seas. I walked out.
It was tremendous." Full-time artist ever since.
1990 First Prize, Mostyn Open 1 (selected by Lewis Biggs, Director
Tate Liverpool)
2001 Founded the Wrexham Stuckists.
2002 Exhibited in The First Stuckist International' at
the Stuckism International Gallery
and subsequent shows
2003 Started Stuckism International Centre, Wales
2003 Exhibited in Stuck in Wednesbury at Wednesbury Museum
and Art Gallery
2004 Exhibited in, co-curator of, The
Stuckists Punk Victorian, Walker Art Gallery
2005 Curated Wrexham Stuckists show at the Oswestry Heritage
and Exhibition Centre, Shropshire
2006 Exhibited in The Triumph of Stuckism, Liverpool John Moores
University, for the 2006 Liverpool Biennial.
2007 Exhibited in I
Won't Have Sex with You as long as We're Married, A
Gallery
"Aeroplane"
painting
"It
reflects my fear of low-flying aircraft. (I once had a nightmare
of huge space fleets in the sky.) I looked out of my backdoor
and saw a huge aeroplane coming straight at me over the treetops.
I felt a mixture of fear and magnetic fascination. It seemed
to just clear the rooftop of my house. In the painting I obsessively
adjusted the angles to get it just right. I think it was a vintage
Lancaster bomber they were taking for a spin."
Work
method
"I start with memories. You only remember what's relevant. I
make loads of sketches from imagination. I pin the sketches
on the wall. I often look at a sketch for months or even years
before I see a way to make it into a painting. It usually goes
well at first but then I run into problems of composition. I
have to make many changes. Sometimes it's years later that I
find a way to finish it. I'm trying to reveal something of a
world beyond time and space."
Links
John Bourne web
site +
new
site
More paintings on www.welshpaintings.co.uk
Text
based on The Stuckists Punk
Victorian book (National Museums Liverpool)
