Brooklyn, New York, USA
Website
johnloris.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
I make representational oil paintings that are concerned with feeling and atmosphere above anything else. I have little interest in details or narratives although they may sometimes sneak themselves in. I use broken color and I prefer to use color rather than value to construct my paintings. Sometimes I paint outdoors from life and sometimes I paint from memory in my studio. I use sketches, watercolors, and photographs. I think a painter should be like a sponge who soaks up everything around them. Perhaps my work would be described as impressionist or post impressionist which I would disagree with. People use those terms for anything. I would simply say that I am a contemporary painter. We have all of art history in our pockets.
What inspires you?
I am inspired by music, literature, and other paintings. I’m inspired by nature and inner states. The inspiration is there and all you have to do is look and listen very carefully but without trying too hard. It is better to find inspiration than to look for it because you will scare it away. A lot of my paintings come from memories or photographs or sketches made while spending time with my partner Caitlin. We are always engaged in some adventure great or small. Her encouragement is invigorating.
Can you speak about your process?
My process is one wherein the painting unfolds. Although I can start with an image in mind or even an image in front of me, it takes time and a bit of back and forth for the painting to emerge as its true self. For example I am currently working on a painting that’s based on a piece of piano music by Maurice Ravel about a water nymph. When i hear the music I see an image—a fuzzy image of a woman playing or perhaps bathing in a small body of water distantly in the moonlight. I listen to the music and think about the image and try to feel it into clarity. I have an idea of the colors. Then I make some small, rough pencil sketches to chisel away at a composition and to decide on the dimensions of the work. Here I have decided that vertical rectangle is best, but one that is not so far off from a square, somewhere between 1:1 and 4:5. This shape I have been quite taken with as of late. So I buy stretcher bars and begin to construct and prime my 38x32” canvas.
I prime with acrylic gesso. I have tried oil grounds and the process is too lengthy and time consuming for me. I also like the absorbency of the acrylic ground. I make the sides dark and let this darkness spill onto the front of the canvas. I apply enough coats to feel satisfied. I will use a lot of oil paint and so the canvas must be heavy and well coated. I begin to mark the canvas with oil paint immediately without any sort of drawing. Freely but cautiously I mark shapes, important points, the nymph, the rocks, the hanging branches, and the plant life.
None of it is precious, it will be covered up. Eventually I take an old scumbling brush and rub areas of color into the canvas.These colors become atmosphere.
Again little is precious and will be painted over. Once this stage feels that it can go no further I switch to my regular brushes and begin to paint thicker and more decisive marks. These will be left alone, or mixed into a new color on the canvas, or scraped off entirely. Maybe they get painted over later and maybe if they do they still peek through. The tone of the painting is beginning to establish itself. I begin to see the key of the piece. Some colors are out of place and I change them. The true colors develop and begin to take over the canvas. All the while things are shifting, the composition itself is changing and refining. The paint continues to build up. Maybe this will take a few days or a few weeks. The picture presents itself to me but not without having had to dig.
How did you become interested in art?
It is a strange and winding road. I was no child artist and never went to art school. I made pictures like any other kid, but I never liked art class in school. In school I was taught early on that you are born with a gift or you are not and also that art is only cute and unimportant. I lived the common life of one who is sure that art is not for me, nor I for art. However I was drawn to music. Music was my creative and intellectual outlet in various ways through school and into adulthood. Then I became interested in literature and writing. I became obsessed with poetry and through poetry I began to understand this idea of art and its magnitude.
I would travel to New York City to visit art museums and I would fill notebooks with poems and fragments and awful sketches. Innocuous at the time, it so happens that this was a time of a metamorphosis; I had begun to construct a chrysalis around me and it was only a matter of time before I would emerge changed. My intrigue with painting continued below the surface and I moved to New York City in 2016. I saw Cézanne’s The Bather at the Museum of Modern Art that triggered some exquisite drive in me that had been dormant. I began to see the expressive possibilities in painting and I started to believe that I could somehow learn to express myself through this medium. In 2018, and I have found no better way to explain this, I was possessed by the spirit; I purchased some oil paints and began to paint.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
For a while I looked up to the Four Cs above all. That’s Chardin, Corot, Courbet, and Cezanne. I’ve also had my youthful periods of obsession with Picasso, and I still find advice in Matisse regularly. Once I came to understand just a little bit about painting I began to learn the most from Monet. I would list Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Pierre Bonnard, and Jacques Truphémus as my heroes now. I’m also wild over a lot of contemporary painters like Michael Weller, Daniel Shadbolt, and Jessica Biggs from the UK. Really there’s something to be learned from every painter whose works you encounter. There are painters I loved dearly when I was younger and find little value in today, and even more so there were painters who meant nothing to me then who mean more to me now than I ever could have foreseen. I’m currently infatuated with traditional Chinese painting. I think of this quote daily, though where it originated I don’t know:
“Be a poet, not a reporter."
What advice do you have for younger artists?
Do what truly pleases you to the deepest part of your being and please do not take anyone else’s law as your own.
Look at a lot of paintings and drawings and read everything of quality that you can. Read the good books. Buy the expensive art book that every great artist owns. Remember that podcasts, YouTube channels, and other social media accounts that attempt to teach you art are often monetized and their goal is not to teach you successfully but to keep you clicking and signing up for courses.
Take what you can from them anyway.
Any more thoughts about art, creativity, or anything else you would like to share?
All of the things you need are inside of you. You can develop yourself by interacting with the world, reading, studying art, doing really anything, but there is no great separate thing outside of you that you must strive towards. It is you and you are right there.
