Own research: John Greenwood

Updated on 25 March 2017 (Harvard referencing and some content).

14 January 2017. Needing a short break from my own Part 5 attempts at abstraction (doubting whether I should be calling my results that), I went to have a look at the “Turps Banana” website, which my tutor had recommended earlier in the course and which I could not persuade myself to subscribe to as yet. I don’t feel confident enough yet to draw useful information from the presented art and artists. However, on the website I was introduced to the intriguing and weird work of John Greenwood (1959, UK) ((Turps Banana, 2016), whose way of thinking comes close to my own but at an immensely higher level of expertise and concentration (Greenwood, n.d.). In approach he is likened to Hieronymus Bosch, whose ideas I also feel quite at home with. In contrast to Bosch’s dark medieval messages, Greenwood’s absurd creatures, which remind me of what you get when applying electron microscopy to the tiniest living things, appear totally at ease in their own crowded, glittering world, they do not seem to mind being put in boxes not much larger in size than their bodies (and observation I feel is in contrast to the claustrophobia mentioned in the article presented on Greenwood’s website (Woodley, 2016).
The paintings are great fun to explore, full of beautifully executed detail. I could get lost in them.

References:

Greenwood, J. (n.d.) Gallery. Large Paintings [image collection] [online]. John Greenwood. Available at: http://johngreenwoodartist.com/section/389781_Large_Paintings.html [Accessed 14 January 2017]

Turps Banana (2016) John Greenwood | A Sad Miracle [online]. Turps Banana, London. Available at: http://turpsbanana.com/gallery/31/john-greenwood-a-sad-miracle [Accessed 14 January 2017]

Woodley, F. (2016) John Greenwood [online]. John Greenwood, September 2016. Available at: http://johngreenwoodartist.com/home.html [Accessed 14 January 2017]

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