About John Worth
I'm a painter, printmaker, and photographer living and working in Lewes, East Sussex.
For years, I have walked the same paths across the South Downs, most often around Mount Caburn, across the flank of the hill, back through the valley, often taking photographs as I go.
My paintings are abstract and highly textured. They're influenced by artists such as Cy Twombly, Antoni Tàpies, Tracey Emin, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. What they seek to do is present fragments of place: the light on chalk, the rhythm of a field edge, and the way the contours of a hillside often feels different in November than it does in May.
Music
Music is central to how I work, while walking and in the studio. Some paintings are built around the five lines of a musical stave, as though land and notation are overlaid. What emerges from that overlap are the rhythms that guide the composition. I'm as interested in intervals and pauses as in marks.
Process
My surfaces are built rather than painted. I layer strips of linen or canvas, work in mixed media, scratch back, sand down, and build up again. Over time a patina forms, one that carries the trace of multiple decisions, erasures and returns. I want the paintings to feel aged, as though time has already passed through them.
Many are finished with a wax varnish. They invite touch. That matters to me. As a counterweight to a world of screen images, I want the work to exist as a physical thing.
Available work
Original paintings, limited edition giclée prints, and fine art photographs are available through the shop. I work with Harwood King , one of the UK's foremost fine art printers, to produce all limited edition prints. Edition sizes are small. Each print is signed and numbered. Browse →Shop
Storytelling
The questions I work with in the studio, about place, memory, and what a surface can hold, are the ones that led me to write The Many Truths of Josef Batten.
The novel follows a war photographer and how he transforms his life after thirty five years of witnessing atrocities.
Writing and painting are not separate practices for me: they are two ways of working at the same problem, one with pigment and surface, the other with words and voice.
(5–20 September, Fitzroy House, High Street, Lewes), I would be delighted to welcome you and show you some original work in person. It's the best way to understand the texture.
Read more about my artistic journey: →Creativity, Community & Me
John Worth holds a BA (Hons) in Photography, Film, Video & Animation from West Surrey College of Art & Design (now University for the Creative Arts, Farnham). He has exhibited in Lewes and the surrounding area, and shows annually at Artwave, the Lewes open studios festival.