John Jennings

At the age of fifteen my sister took me to the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. She told me I would be bored. The first two things I saw were constructions. A voice in my head said, “You can do this” and so I began my life as an artist and my passion for painting. At the same time my desent into Bipolar disorder, self destruction, hospitalisations, art schools, arrogance, painful conflict and chaos began. About nine years ago my painting ground to a halt and it was only in early 2013 after joining Outside In that I started to paint again. From the very beginning my painting has been about the intuitive use of colour as expression. Before I started to paint again my work had been representational even though I rarely painted directly from a subject, preferring to paint from memory. Today, I wake up every morning wanting to paint. The passion is back! And I try to paint every day. I paint my life in the world. My hands take the bits and pieces of memory, experiences and impressions that surface during the process and render them into symbolic form through automatic drawing and then I paint colour intuitively, never forcing. If I start to think about what to do next I break off until the painting tells me how it should go. I only work on one painting at a time and even though I don’t always like the paintings I make I no longer feel conflicted and people have expressed their joy and appreciation of my paintings which has come as a complete surprise to me. I`ve recently trained as an art workshop leader/facilitator with Outside In and derive great pleasure in helping others of all abilities to realise their creative potential through art.