John May - Biography

John May Artist Painter Pop Art South West Wales Fountain Fine Art Llandeilo St Albans

John R. May, painter & print maker, was born in London in 1935. He studied art at Willesden Art School, specializing in painting and print-making for his diploma. After teaching for one year he went to Brighton College of Art to complete his studies in 1960.
 
During World War II, John was evacuated to Bovinger Lodge Farm, just three and a half miles from North Weald aerodrome, H.Q. of R.A.F. Fighter Command.  The proximity of W.W.II aircraft was to have a marked effect on his later artistic inspiration.
 
Arriving at Art School in 1951, with drawings of aircraft and film stars, he was told that his pictures evinced good draughtsmanship, but were not "Art".  When John left Willesden, he was painting interiors and exteriors in a Sickert influenced style and gained considerable success in exhibiting his work.
 
During the 1960s, encouraged by the work of contemporaries, Peter Blake, Alan Jones and Peter Phillips, John returned to his earlier subject material and produced paintings and lithographs in a Pop Art style.
 
John May taught art in the London Borough of Brent for 30 years, taking early retirement in 1989, and latterly has been applying 20th century techniques to his paintings and prints of W.W.II aircraft.
 
Exhibitions

Senefelder Club, London, 1958
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1959, 1961, 1963
Guildhall Art Gallery - Lord Mayor's Art Award Exhibition, 1962, 1963, 1965
Brighton Art Gallery - Autumn Exhibition, 1961
Brighton Art Gallery - The Painter's Brighton, 1962
City of Bradford Art Gallery, 1962, 1963
Art Exhibitions Bureau Traveling Exhibitions, 1963, 1964
Kemptown Art Gallery, 1964, 1965
Woking Art Gallery, 1964
Brent Town Hall, 1966, 1970
St Albans Abbey, 2001, 2002, 2003

Fountain Fine Art, Llandeilo, 2004

John May on Pop Art.....

Q. What made you decide to create Pop Art? It is quite different from your usual painting style.

My Pop-art style evolved quite naturally around 1963. I had been looking at Sickert's late paintings done from photographs, "The Raising of Lazarus", "High Steppers", "The Miner", "Jack & Jill" and nearly all of his pictures made starting in the 1930s until his death in 1942.  I had always been interested in the re-interpretation of photographs, a tradition that stretches back to Delacroix, Degas (with whom Sickert had worked earlier) and beyond. After all, the camera had been invented in the first place as a drawing aid. This seemed to me to be the natural continuation of the painting tradition and I decided to work in a Sickertian style but using a much lighter palette allowing the coldness or hotness of colour to determine tones. As my colours and drawing brightened to an almost primary level, so my pictures became identifiably Pop in style.

Q. Who were you most influenced by with respect to Pop Art?

From the early 60s onwards I was well aware of work of such artists as Peter Phillips, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann, Jasper Johns, and particularly, James Rosenquist and I always found their work inspiring and reassuring. However, I would always refer back to Sickert for first principles.

Q. Where did you draw most of your inspiration from for the pictures that you will be exhibiting?

The subject matter for my 1960s painting remained very much in the tradition of Rubens, Boucher, Renoir and Modigliani, that of the female form. My intention was to express it in the style of Marvel comics, keeping the drawing fairly tight but with the colours and tones "in your face" so to speak.

Q. Was Pop Art just a phase for you or do you continue to produce this kind of work?

I consider Pop art to be the in natural tradition of art, and not an barren off-shoot like abstract expressionism and conceptualism have proved to be, valid though these movements have been. I have not abandoned any of the precepts that have informed my work from the start. Pop art contains all the ingredients of great art and may soon have a renaissance.

Q. The female form is quite prevalent in your work. Were the subjects people
you knew or were they purely fictitous?

The early nudes were done from life but the later 60s ones were composed from drawings and photographs. None were purely fictitious in the Marvel comic sense.